


Take the Long Way Home

by Ludovico_is_my_homeboy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Morality, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Steve, Billy Hargrove Being an Asshole, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Person, Captivity, Caretaking, Domestic Fluff, Fights, Fisherman Billy, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, Personal Growth, Possessive Behavior, Protective Billy Hargrove, Rough Sex, Selkie!Steve, Selkies, Smut, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Supernatural Elements, Unhealthy Relationships, consent issues because Steve is a selkie, if that applies to selkies?, selkie steve, supernatural murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-04-14 16:16:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy/pseuds/Ludovico_is_my_homeboy
Summary: Billy finds something on the beach and decides to take it home... but home may be a bit further away than he thinks.“What are you? You’re not human, I know that. You’re too goddamn beautiful to be human.”Billy pulls away and glares down, studying the wide-eyed creature, frantically running through the half-remembered fragments of his mother’s stories in his head. Finally, it clicks.“Selkie.”Selkie AU





	1. Tears

Port Hawkins, 1955

 

The glass shatters above Billy Hargrove’s head as Neil lurches out of his chair, stumbling forward.

“Out, you useless waste! Now!”

Billy scrambles past Susan and Maxine and away, escaping into the twilight outside of the fisherman’s cottage he shares with his family. He feels something wet and stinging just under his ear – looks like the glass smashed the wall a bit closer to his face than he had first realized – and shudders in wry wonder at how surprisingly quick his father can be sometimes.

The scene that had just finished playing out in their family’s small living space was nothing new or unusual.

Neil Hargrove was an old seaman, a respected pillar of their little fishing town. However, things had changed when an accident had ended his career a few years ago and left him more or less confined to a sturdy chair by the fireplace. Already a hard man, Neil was prone to fits of rage and frustration now, and even in his quieter moments tended to stew in bitterness and regret.

Billy had been forced to take over the business of feeding and providing for their small family. His life had been nothing but a slow downward spiral since then.

Billy walks the fifty-odd yards to the family’s small dock and The Hurricane, an ironically named rust bucket that looks like it might very easily capsize in a light drizzle. He scrambles aboard, starts her up, and pushes out. He steers the boat away from the lights of the cottage and, some ways off, the seaport town of Hawkins.

He ties his long, blonde hair back out of his eyes with a bit of leather and, rummaging around, finds an almost-clean rag to press against his bleeding ear.

He decides he’ll go night fishing.

He does this sometimes on bad days, on bad nights. He almost never catches anything at night but being out on the boat, escaping to the calm, cool rocking of the ocean's waves, is still always better than being in that house, with HIM.

Billy lets the outgoing tide guide the boat, lets it steer itself once he gets far enough out. He doesn’t even bother taking out his fishing equipment. Instead he slides down on deck, miserable, lonely, and angry. His hand drops down over the side into the dark waters and he trails his fingers along the surface.

Neil had always said that Billy’s mother was a whore, but Billy knew that was a lie. He remembers his mother, her hair long like his, her lovely smile, the stories she sometimes told him. He’s forgotten most of them now – the blurred grind of years had slowly erased her fanciful tales of mermaids and killer whales and cannibal tribes and falling stars – but he still remembers, with bittersweet poignancy, the feeling of being warm and cared for as musical words fell from his mother’s lips.

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until he looks down and sees a tear fall from his eyes to the water. The rising moon illuminates his reflection and he scowls at the dark streak on the side of his face. He’s still bleeding. A drop of dark blood follows the tear into the water and disappears.

There’s nothing at home for him. There’s nothing anywhere for him. There’s only drifting aimlessly on the sea.

In time, Billy turns his boat back towards a safe harbor and a small cottage that is not so safe, towards a place that is not, and has never been, a real home for him.

He is so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he doesn’t hear, in the distance, the lonesome sweet song echoing over the water’s surface.

 

 

The next morning Billy is restless. As soon as he wakes, lying on his cot in the bedroom he shares with his sister, he despairs of himself, of his life, of his future.

He had dreamed last night, after he had returned from his brief foray on the boat, of a dark safe place in the water. It was what he imagined the bottom of the sea would be like, but warmer, the ocean currents gently rocking him.

The harsh morning sunlight and the sound of his useless father’s drunken snoring in the next room would irritate even the most placid of persons, but coming after a dream like that they are enough to send Billy running out of his house without so much as breakfast.

He walks towards town. The day is clear and warm and unremarkable. Billy shrugs on his waterproof jacket and tries not to let his heart sink further as he takes in the unrelenting sameness of Hawkins.

He roves around town, but it is too early for trouble. Not even his usual cohorts, Slick Willie and Tommy H. and that tart that usually hangs around them, are up and about.

Billy wants to tear into something, to tear out of his life.

He walks down Hawkins Main Street as his step-sister, Maxine, walks in the opposite direction to school. He usually walks with her part of the way, but she is old enough to go by herself now and since Billy is nearly 18 and no longer goes to school there doesn’t seem to be much point. She looks like she wants to talk, wants to acknowledge him, but he isn’t in the mood. Soon enough one of her little school friends is running up to join her. Brother and sister walk past each other like strangers.

With nothing better to do, Billy walks down towards the sea. He doesn’t go towards the boat… he walks towards the rocks which line the shore, sloping up into the cliff face which stretches down the coastline. Even this stone formation is a relatively modest geological structure – nothing in Hawkins is large or special enough for notice – but it still slashes across the landscape like a knife and offers a formidable obstacle for the lone climber.

Later he will think that he was being driven to the sea and the rocks that day, that some force larger than himself was calling out to him, singing in his blood. Perhaps it was so.

At the time he just feels bored, sober, horny, frustrated. There is an underlying hum, a quiet electricity, but it is only half acknowledged in Billy’s consciousness. He has half a mind to stretch out on a sunny rock and take a nap. It’s a fine day out, and not too cloudy or windy. Maybe he’ll go for a swim before going out on the boat.

He has only just reached the beach when he realizes that he isn’t alone.

Long limbs and a mop of hair are crouched down among a jagged grouping of the rocks safely out of reach of the tide. A young man is bent over, his hands busy. When he finishes whatever his task is he straightens, climbs up on one of the rocks, stretches a kink out of his shoulders, and looks up to where Billy is watching him a few yards away.

The sight takes Billy’s breath away.

The boy is as naked as a babe from his head to his toes, and he is beautiful.

His build is broad yet graceful, his pale skin dotted with moles. He is clearly Billy’s age or thereabouts. Though he is perhaps not as well-muscled as Billy he looks svelte and strong nevertheless. Billy finds his eyes drawn to strong shoulders and then down to the boy's chest, to the tapering vee of his firm belly and slender hips, to his uncovered manhood. He has a mess of long brown hair and clear, warm brown eyes that Billy wants to swim in. His tongue darts out to lick his full, red lips, and they in turn quirk up in a warm, welcoming smile.

He could have been made for Billy, plucked out of his dreams, the sweet imaginings that he has never shared with anyone. He stands confident and unashamed, watching Billy with open curiosity and a frank attraction, with a small smile that is very nearly a smirk.

He reaches out a hand, long, lovely fingers beckoning. Billy is mesmerized. The boy’s eyes are so big, trusting, playful. Billy takes a few steps forward, reaches out his own hand. Before their fingers touch, however, the boy takes off, leaping up and over a few rocks to put more distance between them. Billy is startled at first, but then the boy throws a playful smirk over his shoulder.

He is inviting Billy to chase him.

Billy smiles at the challenge and scrambles after the mysterious figure without thinking. The boy has a natural grace but also the awkwardness of a new born colt still trying to understand how legs work, stumbling one moment and the next almost defying gravity and physics with his flailing limbs.

Billy moves more slowly on the slippery wet rocks but is surer in his footing overall. The two climb and chase, the beautiful boy always just out of Billy’s reach, now slowing down, now picking up the pace, gently taunting. Finally, they reach a flattened plateau area cut into the cliff's slope. Billy catches up with the young man there, wrapping his arms around him from behind and pulling him down.

Laughing, panting, the two tumble to the ground, arms reaching out to cushion each other’s fall and protect themselves from hurt.

Billy rolls over on top of the strange boy, who accepts his position beneath Billy and stretches out languidly on the warm rock, smiling.

“Hello,” the boy says.

Billy smiles back. The boy is even more beautiful up close, and his skin soft and warm in the sun, his eyes sparkling. Billy looks over his shoulder, but they are alone... there is no one to see or judge.

Billy feels a little bit drunk… his loneliness or his restlessness has finally caught up with him. He isn’t really thinking as clearly as he might have otherwise, which is why instead of asking the boy’s name, or who his people are, or why he is stark naked and running around the rocks, Billy instead leans down and kisses him passionately.

The boy welcomes the kiss, opening his mouth and letting Billy in, answering with his own lips and tongue (and again, this strange fellow’s willingness to let Billy do as he pleases without a fight or a speech or a by-your-leave should give Billy pause, but doesn’t). He is tender, receptive, encouraging Billy with his gentle movements. He tastes Billy’s mouth and Billy responds with his own increasingly urgent and demanding exploration.

Billy’s hands rove all over the stranger’s skin, his touch-starved flesh buzzing with the contact. He finds himself gripping the boy, trying to hold on to him and anchor them both, but soon that isn’t enough… his hands need to roam, to touch and cover soft skin, to tease nipples and moles and small scars, to bruise and soothe. To keep, and to keep safe. So beautiful, so pliant, so sweet.

Billy can’t remember the last time affection was so freely given, and without any kind of agenda. Lord knows there was little enough tenderness at home, and his previous fumbling forays with various partners had always felt very transactional in the end.

The kiss deepens, and the boy pushes his whole body against Billy, from his fine long legs to his hot groin, to his belly, to his broad chest and swimmer’s shoulders. Before Billy knows it, he’s peeling off his own jacket, his shirt, pulling down his trousers, trying to match the boy skin for skin.

Billy knows what he wants to do. It’s a forbidden thing, a sin, but he had done it once or twice before when he had been a bit younger and had gone to the big city to look for work. There were men there who had taught him things, secret things…

He pulls away and sucks on his fingers, his free hand caressing the other boy’s rapidly plumping cock. The boy himself watches with wide, dark eyes, fascinated, wriggling with pleasure. It’s all Billy can do to keep from grinning down at him like a loon.

After a moment Billy leans back down, plants another deep kiss on the stranger’s mouth and pushes a finger into that tight, forbidden little hole. The boy arches his back, seemingly torn between wanting to push down on Billy’s hand and pull away from the sting of the intrusion. He finally settles for tilting his head up and gasping for more sweetness from Billy’s lips. Billy gives it to him as he gently but quickly works him open.

Soon another finger joins the first. The boy hisses a bit (there had been some sort of grease or oil before, the men in the city had had it and Billy had tried similar things himself later… this was probably not so good, and Billy feels a deep pang of regret…) but after a few moments of Billy pushing his fingers in and out of the tight ring of muscle the pain seems to slip into a kind of pleasure. Billy finds that special spot inside that he knows of, the one he had sometimes found in himself when alone and bored on the boat, and as he strokes it the boy groans.

Billy watches all the emotions racing across the boy’s face, fascinated, as he pumps his fingers in and out, makes scissoring motions, makes room. Eventually Billy decides that the boy’s entrance is sufficiently stretched. Both their cocks are red and leaking, desperate. Billy withdraws his fingers and, after a mere moment’s pause and a deep breath, pushes himself in to the waiting hole. The boy keens at the deep, profound invasion of his body, and Billy gasps as he slowly goes deeper and deeper before finally bottoming out.

He’s so tight, so hot, so perfect wrapped around Billy. Billy feels like he’ll never be able to come down again, never be able to catch his breath, and he grapples at the boy’s sides and shoulders as if that will anchor him. He reaches down and strokes the boy’s face, suddenly overwhelmed with tender affection for this mysterious creature.

“Okay?” he asks.

The boy is panting and sweating, but he looks content. He nods. “Um…” he whimpers. “Move, maybe. Please?”

Billy snorts and nods, shifting his hips until he is rocking back and forth and making shallow thrusts, fucking the boy open gently. He can tell he’s hurting him a bit, pain and pleasure dancing across that pale face, but as Billy moves the boy relaxes and it gets easier.

He nibbles at the moles on the boy’s long, beautiful neck, gasps in ecstasy, laps eagerly at sweat and skin.

He lets his free hand drift down until it is wrapped around the other boy’s neglected member, tenderly caressing the silky skin there, slicking it with pre-cum. The boy makes a noise that sounds almost inhuman, a low guttural cry, strangely musical.

Billy’s hips and his hand pick up speed and soon the two young men are moving together in a rough, sweet harmony. Billy knows when his cock has struck the sweet inner spot again… the boy is loud, shameless, and he makes Billy shameless as well. Billy presses his lips to the boy’s again, and again, his tongue claiming his mouth, their voices rising together in their shared pleasure.

In one beautiful moment the boy arches his back again, lets out another low cry, a moan that goes straight to Billy’s cock, and cums all over Billy’s hand.

 _So beautiful_.

The boy clenches down wonderfully on Billy’s cock during his orgasm… a few more thrusts and Billy follows a moment later, howling in pleasure as he fills the boy with his seed and collapses in a heap on top of him.

They lay there together for a long time, embracing, caressing, pressing gentle kisses to each other’s sweat-streaked faces, slowly floating back down. In a short while Billy’s cock softens, and he pulls out of the boy.

He lets his hand drift down and touch the used hole…it’s raw but not damaged, and he can feel a little cum leaking out. The boy makes a low, almost wounded keening sound when Billy presses a finger in and feels his own release coating the tight inner walls.

It feels like victory, like possession, and it stirs up something warm in Billy’s gut. He is very reluctant to stop touching, and he remains pressed down on top of his lover, resting as they both catch their breath.

He’ll probably have a horrible sunburn on his back from this, Billy thinks idly. The boy lifts his arms up and runs long, clever fingers through Billy’s tangled, sweaty curls. It makes him want to melt.

For the first time in memory Billy feels content all the way to his bones. He could stay here forever, with the boy and the sunlight and those fingers in his hair and those eyes gazing at him with unvarnished affection.

What a gift this is, after all the loneliness and despair.

So beautiful. And it’s all Billy’s.

Who would ever have thought that?

 

Reason comes back to him slowly, in shards.

 _I don’t know his name_.

Something inside Billy goes very still, a wary, watchful animal.

_What is this?_

The boy… no...

No...

No… the _thing,_ the  _creature_ (it isn’t human, Billy knows that… suddenly, he knows that… or had he known all along?), shifts beneath him, twisting away to face the sea.

Billy presses down harder, stopping the movement, his touch and his voice no longer gentle.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The boy looks up at him and his lips twist into a knowing smile. Billy doesn’t like it.

“It’s time for me to go home,” he says. “You too.”

“No.”

Billy buries his face in the boy’s long, sun-warmed hair, tangles his hand in the soft strands. He can smell the salty richness of the ocean and a distinctive warm musk, and something else, nameless, primal, electric. He tightens his grip again, no longer caring about his lover’s comfort, desperately terrified that he will slip away like water through his fingers.

“Yes. Time to go."

“No. Not yet,” Billy begs. “Don’t go yet. Please. Please, love…”

“I have to,” says the boy. He sounds sorry enough, but his insistence and his presumption anger Billy. He’s acting like he knows something Billy doesn't, like Billy is being the unreasonable one, the needy child.

The strange lad twitches again. “It’s time. I have to go home.”

“What are you?” Billy growls.

The boy stills suddenly.

He doesn’t answer.

“What are you? You’re not human, I know that. You’re too goddamn beautiful to be human.”

Billy pulls away and glares down, studying the wide-eyed creature, frantically running through the half-remembered fragments of his mother’s stories in his head. Finally, it clicks.

“Selkie.”

The boy beneath him gulps. Billy smiles down at him, and from the look of consternation in his dark eyes it isn’t a very nice smile.

“Where’s your skin, little selkie?” Billy purrs. But Billy already knows. He had seen him hide the skin down by the rocks. He understands now what the young man had been doing there, crouching down, his hands busy. He knows exactly where his captive’s Achilles heel is.

The boy’s sharp bite on Billy’s arm is unexpected, enough to make Billy yelp and loosen his grip on him but not enough to make him release the selkie completely.

The boy scrambles up and onto his feet, but he is still unaccustomed to human limbs and Billy catches hold of him easily, making him lose his balance and fall forward. He lands with a hard thud, hitting his arm and his head on the rocks beneath him, while Billy lets go and sprints past him towards the shoreline, pulling his trousers up as he does so.

The selkie tries to climb to his feet again, instinct telling him to move towards home, to the waves, to the sea, but logic telling him that he won’t get far without his seal skin. He lurches forward like one in a dream state, his head pounding, fear and panic in his chest.

_Move. Forward. Danger. Predator. Run. Home. HOME!_

When the selkie reaches the rocks below, he sees that he is too late. The blonde man with the shark’s smile is holding his precious skin in his arms like a trophy.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys!  
> Just a heads up, Billy's actions are definitely not recommended when dealing with supernatural pseudo-boyfriends in general, so if you find a selkie in your own neighborhood please don't use this as a relationship model. There's going to be a whole lot of ambiguous morality and iffy life choices in this fic, so if that's not your scene and you'd like a fluffier story might I suggest my other (now completed) story "Fire and Ice(packs)"? Go on, you know you want to...


	2. Anchor

Billy had not thought this through.

He had the selkie’s skin, and therefore had a selkie. But what now?

He couldn’t very well bring the selkie back home to the cottage with him, just casually sit him down for tea with his father. He couldn’t do that, yet a dark, irrational part of his mind was nearly mad with fear that if he let the creature out of his sight for an instant he would vanish completely.

On some level he knew that this fear was unfounded – according to his mother’s stories, once you had a selkie’s skin they were bound to the shore and to you, and could not then leave until they got their skin back. However, that did not mean that there was an abundance of safe places in Port Hawkins to house a selkie.

His mother’s tales were also things that Billy knew he had to take with a grain of salt – after all, up until a few hours ago Billy had been quite sure that selkies were a myth, right along with sirens, dragons, and Father Christmas.

Fortunately for Billy, there is an abandoned fishing shed in a small cove a good few miles down the shore. It had once belonged to a reclusive local character who had long since died, and Billy was almost completely sure he was the only one who knew of the shed and the cove now.

Having tied the selkie’s hands together and fashioned something like a leash for the thing’s neck with some old fishing rope, Billy stows the seal skin in his jacket and proceeds to march his prisoner down the beach, their progress carefully hidden from prying eyes by the cliffs and rocks on one side and the wild sea on the other.

They make their way in silence, Billy giving the occasional tug on the leash when the selkie slows down or tries to stop and pull away. At one point the selkie loses his balance and falls on the sand, jarring his arm and letting out a pained cry. Billy jerks the creature upright with more force than is probably necessary. The tension between them makes the trek feel particularly long and unpleasant for both parties, but Billy forces them to keep up a steady pace. He feels like his heart is going to fly out of his chest at any moment.

The sanctuary Billy sought is a small beach sheltered by a curve in the cliff face, wide enough for small boats to anchor but effectively hidden from view at most angles. Billy himself had only stumbled across the place by accident a while back and had immediately been struck by the area's lovely seclusion.

The shed itself, though built away from the reach of the tides and protected from extreme wind and rain by the cliff, is in pretty bad shape, dirty and cold and rotting away in places. The inside smells like old fish and mildew and is horribly dark.

However, it has four walls and a roof and a small wood stove and a table and a metal frame for a cot propped up under a tarp. Once Billy moves out some of the rusty, disused boat equipment it’s actually quite roomy inside.

The selkie says nothing while Billy inspects the shed and moves items around. He just watches from where Billy had tied him up to some old metal relic (which upon further inspection proves to be an old anchor) in the corner of the shed. He is shivering violently, though whether it is from cold or from fear Billy doesn’t know. He belatedly realizes that the boy is still naked and, looking around, finds a piece of tarp that isn’t too oily or moldy and wraps it around the boy’s shoulders.

“There. Better.”

The words sound stupid the moment they leave Billy’s mouth. The selkie doesn’t verbally respond, but he rolls his eyes and shifts under the pathetic excuse for comfort in a rather eloquent way.

Billy really hadn’t thought this through at all.

“‘S your own fault,” Billy mumbles, dropping his eyes down to where his hands are tugging the tarp closed around the boy. He clears his throat and tries again in a slightly stronger voice. “You shouldn’t have tried to leave.”

Again, the words seem inappropriate when said out loud, but they hit on the crux of the matter. This was all the selkie’s fault for trying to trick Billy, for trying to run. If the selkie chose not to see it that way… well.

There is blood on the boy’s face from where he had tripped and struck his head on rock trying to get to his skin, and his arm is clearly hurt. Billy reaches out a hand to touch the wound but the selkie flinches away violently. Wonderful. Apparently the selkie’s clumsiness is also somehow Billy’s fault.

“I have to go,” Billy says, giving up on making the stupid thing see sense.

The boy huffs and then echoes Billy. “ _I_ have to go.” His voice is lilting, strange, and Billy marvels at how in the world he hadn’t immediately understood that this boy was something more than human.

When Billy doesn’t respond the selkie narrows his eyes and tugs at the rope leash still wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Let me go now.”

“No,” Billy shakes his head. “You don’t leave. I won’t be gone long. I’ve got some stuff to do. I’ll… I’ll bring back what we need…”

The selkie shivers. His beautiful hair is crusty with dirt and sweat and is hanging in his eyes, eyes which are now fixed on the floor, wide with fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you, or anything,” Billy insists.

The selkie is tied up and bleeding like a beaten dog. The shed looks like a madman’s hovel, filled with a wide assortment of vicious-looking fishing and sailing equipment. The selkie’s seal skin is safely tucked away in Billy’s jacket, far out of reach. The look the boy gives Billy speaks volumes, but he doesn’t have time to argue the point.

Billy is going to sort this out. He just needs to think.

“Just, just sit down.” Billy pushes at the boy’s shoulders and he reluctantly complies. At least the rope has enough slack that the boy can sit comfortably. He leans against the wall next to the anchor and wraps his arms protectively around his knees, curling inwards as Billy towers over him.

The sight sends a pang through Billy’s chest. The selkie now shivering and in pain on the floor looks so different from the laughing streak of sunshine he had first seen leaping across the rocks, dancing in the surf.

For a moment Billy can’t fathom what had possessed him to do this, to throw this beautiful creature down on the rocks until he was bruised and bleeding, to steal one half of the boy’s self, to make him a terrified prisoner in this abandoned fishing shack.

 _But he was going to leave_. The voice of a hurt, betrayed child is crying out in Billy’s mind. _He was going to go away_.

Billy kneels next to the boy and gently brushes his hair out of his eyes, ignoring the way the selkie flinches and turns away from him.

“Hey. Hey, pretty one. My name is William. Billy.”

The selkie doesn’t look at him, doesn’t answer.

“What’s your name, pretty?”

He stares determinedly at the wall.

“Come on, sweetheart. Do you have a name?”

The selkie makes a hurt little noise but says nothing. Billy sighs.

“I’ll be back soon,” Billy repeats, trying to soften his voice so that it sounds more like a promise than a threat. The selkie finally turns his gaze back to Billy, but, again, judging by the selkie’s expression he hadn’t done a very good job of comforting his captive.

No matter. Billy turns, grabs the seal skin, and hurries out of the shed.

 

 

Billy works quickly.

He returns to his usual strip of beach and pulls the selkie’s seal skin out of his own unimpressive work jacket. He runs the smooth material through his hands, considering his options, fascinated by the way the silvery grey catches the light. There’s power in this thing – Billy can recognize power even if he is sometimes unclear on the softer human emotions. Looking at the quicksilver skin makes him shiver with desire and fear.

He is half tempted to destroy it completely, to cut it up or burn it, but he can’t remember what the stories had said about that, about how doing so might affect the health of the selkie. He doesn’t want to risk it.

In the end he buries the skin in a secret place of his own, confident that it wouldn’t be disturbed and that no one will ever find it. Once he is reasonably satisfied that the skin is safe, he turns and takes off for home.

It is easy to play the part of dutiful son for a few hours, long enough for Billy to pack his meager belongings and steal some money from his step-mother’s biscuit tin. He slips out into town to the store and buys food, brandy, a spare set of clothes, some blankets, fuel, and other sundry supplies. He’d gotten into the habit of hording odds and ends on The Hurricane long ago, but with this he’ll be set for a good long while. On further consideration, and with a guilty pang, he also buys a packet of bandages and ointment. He stows his purchases on the boat and goes to wrap up things at home.

It is painfully easy to pick a fight, to needle at his father repeatedly as the afternoon hours slip away into the early evening.

Before long the familiar refrain echoes through the cottage…

“You’ll die alone, in the gutter, just like your whore of a mother!”

“Burn in hell, old man!”

“Billy!”

Maxine’s shouted warning comes a moment too late – a surprisingly strong grip wraps itself around Billy’s wrist and it’s all he can do to jerk away. The effort leaves both men sprawled out on the floor, but Billy is younger, and quicker, and has something beautiful waiting for him beyond this miserable family drama.

It’s enough for him to send the broken down old man into a rage, to rise to his feet in one fluid movement, and to storm out of the house with the shout that he was going fishing and that he may or may not be back again. It’s all the satisfaction he needs, or is likely to get, and it feels like emancipation.

He is nearly 18 and doesn’t owe anyone anything. His father could probably survive on his pension well enough, and if not, Susan could get a job.

 _Whoring_ , Billy thinks with ugly glee. It doesn’t matter, just so long as Billy gets The Hurricane away. He needs it.

Maxine calls out to him as he strides away, but he ignores her. It sounds like she’s crying, but Billy feels very little sympathy. Tears get you nowhere.

 _Tears got you a selkie_.

Perhaps they had, Billy thinks. If the stories were true, then tears had brought the selkie to Billy. However, it had been Billy’s will and initiative that had captured the selkie, had kept that beautiful boy from running off, so perhaps the lesson here is to tough it out rather than go soft inside. Maxine could learn something from that, if Billy had the time or inclination to tell her. He finds he has neither.

He throws himself into his boat and pushes off without a backward glance.

 

 

The cove is isolated, and it is much easier getting there by boat than by foot (and without having to drag a recalcitrant selkie behind him). He beaches The Hurricane and unloads his supplies as quickly as possible. It is nearly fully dark now, the day ending for Billy in a way no one on earth could have predicted. There is nothing but silence from the shed.

 _Maybe he’s escaped_.

Billy’s hands shake as he lights his kerosene lamp. He takes a deep breath and strides up the beach towards the shed, opening the door with a confidence he doesn’t feel.

He raises his lamp and quickly illuminates most of the small structure. He can see the creature, still wrapped in the tarp, curled up in the corner where he left him. He resists the urge to check if the selkie is still breathing and instead walks over to the wood stove and opens the grating. It looks functional, and he places his lamp next to it, walks back outside and starts dragging his supplies into the shed.

Silence hangs heavy, accusatory, as Billy unpacks his treasures. He ignores his prisoner for the moment. Soon enough he gets a fire going in the stove, unpacks some biscuits and tea, uncovers the cot frame and sets about making it into a serviceable bed. Only when he has completed these chores does he dare turn to check on the selkie.

The selkie is awake and watching Billy. The fire and the lamp made the single room seem almost cheery, but when cast on the creature's face the light only illuminates things that make Billy’s insides freeze.

The selkie’s head had stopped bleeding but it is still a mess of sweat and dirt and blood. There are rope burns and bruises on his neck and wrists, which are still tightly bound, and his left arm has turned a dark purple colour from when he had fallen on it. His nakedness now makes him seem horribly vulnerable instead of wildly beautiful, and he is still curled up against the wall in fear.

His eyes, though, are the worst for Billy. There are dark shadows underneath which make him look particularly pale and ethereal, and the boy’s gaze is pained, reproachful.

He is still so terribly beautiful.

 _This was a mistake_.

 _He was going to leave_. _I couldn’t let him leave_.

Billy walks over to the selkie. He flicks out his switchblade and the creature’s eyes go wide but before he can cry out or move away Billy is using the blade to cut away the ropes binding his hands and neck, careful and efficient. He quickly tucks the blade out of sight again and pushes the filthy tarp off the selkie’s trembling shoulders.

“I understand if you want to bite me again. You’ve earned it. Maybe you want to get cleaned up first?”

The selkie sucks in a deep breath, considering Billy, who is careful to keep his face calm and neutral. Finally, the selkie nods and allows Billy to help him up and lead him over to the stove.

Billy has put the kettle on, and as it starts to whistle he takes it off the stove and pours the boiling water into a basin half-filled with cold freshwater. He draws the selkie close and, taking a clean rag, begins to wipe away the grime and blood. The selkie makes a low noise and closes his eyes, and the sight and sound send a shard of pain through Billy’s chest.

Billy tries to be gentle. He tries to make every touch of the wet rag an apology. Because it isn’t the selkie’s fault, not really. Sure, he was trying to leave, but… maybe it wasn’t all his fault.

Funny, how Billy had almost talked himself into hating the selkie for wanting to leave him. After all, he hadn’t really given the creature any reason to want to stay. Those despicable, selfish feelings from earlier were gone now, swept away by the beauty and the hurt on display in front of him.

He finds himself speaking, trying to fill the silence.

“So, it’s late… we’ll probably just want to have some supper and sleep tonight, but tomorrow I’ve got boards and nails and supplies to fix the place up, nice and comfortable. I’ve brought food and blankets, and when you’re clean I can bandage you up so you’ll heal right. Okay?”

Silence. The selkie leans into Billy’s touch as Billy wipes away the last of the blood from his cheek and neck, his eyes still closed. It doesn't seem to be a conscious action on his part.

“I know… earlier… it was a bit… I didn’t mean to hurt you. To make you fall. I wasn’t… wasn’t thinking, I guess. I didn’t mean it. It was good, wasn’t it, before that?”

Billy tries for some of the old charm and swagger, sticks his tongue out and wiggles it suggestively.

“I sure as hell liked it. You’re beautiful, love. It’ll be like that again. All sweet and good… good for both of us. Promise. I’ll take care of you.

“We’ve got everything we need, right here. We’ll make it a home. And each other… we’ve got each other. I’ll look after you, make sure you’ve got everything you could want. So pretty… You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll be so sweet to you, you’ll be dizzy from it.

“Once we’re settled in I can show you my boat. The Hurricane. Dad thinks it’s his, but I found the hull abandoned on the beach in Candle Cove, and I bought and salvaged the parts to get it up and running. Dad only bought the steering gears, and the rudder. I put it all together. And I do all the fishing on it.”

The selkie’s eyes open languidly and he blinks once. Twice. Then nods. “Yes.”

Yes.

“You saw me fishing?”

The selkie’s eyes flick away, nervous, unsure.

“You saw me fishing and heard me… heard me crying, right? That’s what the stories say happens.” Although it pains Billy to admit it, even now.

The selkie nods, still not quite meeting Billy’s eyes. “Yes.”

“So, what? You come on land…?”

“Yes. To comfort. To comfort you. For a little while.”

 _For a little while_. Billy hums at that. He’s finished bathing the selkie. Christ, there was still cum on the boy’s belly, dried and flaking. Cum and bruises and tarp grease. And Billy thought some lewd tongue-wagging would work. He’s a damn moron. Or a monster.

Billy coughs, trying to bury his nerves. “So, your skin. How does that work, exactly?”

The selkie’s eyes narrow, but Billy needs to know. He needs to know the rules, so he can then bend them to suit his purposes.

“You have my skin,” the selkie says, his voice raspy from disuse and his tone deceptively calm. “You’ve hidden it?”

Billy nods.

“I need my skin to go home, back to the sea. When I wrap it around myself I take my seal form… and when I take it off I must wear my human form. As long as you have my skin, I stay.” _With you_ is left unspoken.

The selkie looks like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, like this is the part where Billy tries to fillet him and sell him in bits at the fish market.

Billy drops the rag back in the bowl of water, processing this, and then nods to himself. He reaches over with one hand and starts rifling through a box, looking for ointment and bandages for the selkie’s wrists and head. He doesn’t know what to do about the arm except pray that no bones are broken.

“Thanks. Thank you for being honest with me,” he says.

The selkie nods. He doesn’t point out that, as a selkie, he has had very little practice with lying, and that dishonesty is not his preferred approach anyway.

“I… I told you my name already, I guess. It’s William Hargrove. Everyone calls me Billy. What’s your name?”

The selkie huffs and crosses his arms, though the effect is ruined when he grabs his sore arm wrong and winces in pain. Billy reaches out and touches the bruised arm gently but doesn’t go any further – the gesture seems to be more of an attempt to confirm that the selkie is still there, still real, rather than to comfort or help him.

Still, the selkie is looking a bit better, less pale and hurt. That knowing little smirk is back, but Billy doesn’t mind it so much now that he’s more confident about his ownership of the creature.

“You couldn’t pronounce it. It’s…,” the selkie makes a guttural noise that sounds disturbingly seal-like. Billy flinches, then fights back the urge to laugh.

“Yeah, okay. What should I call you then?”

The selkie considers this, and while he does so he graciously allows Billy to tilt his head to the side with a gentle press of his fingertips and start applying the medicine. When the selkie speaks again, he speaks slowly, like one considering his words carefully.

“I used to swim up and visit an old man in the far north who would leave shellfish out for me to eat. He thought I was his son who had drowned at sea during a great war. He called me Steinfinnr. My mother said my human name was Stiofán, or something like that.”

Billy finishes wrapping up the selkie’s head and moves on to his bruised neck.

The selkie thinks for a long moment, and then looks up.

“You can call me Steve.”

 


	3. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Party has a conversation

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Dustin. It’s just that what you’re saying is stupid.”

“It’s not, Mike! I was down by the cove and I saw him… he was shimmering and almost… dancing in the water!”

“Which cove?”

“You know… the cove… that one where old man Philips used to fish.”

“I thought the path down to that place collapsed? Wasn't it all destroyed in the last storm?” Lucas interjects.

“Yeah… I fell through a bunch of bushes to get there, actually…” Dustin admits sheepishly.

“So you went to the cove where creepy old man Philips used to fish and you saw a guy swimming?”

“Uh, no, Lucas… how many people do you know who can swim in the cove? There are so many rocks and whirlpools, and the water is way too cold this time of year. Freezing!”

“Well, was he wearing diving gear?”

“No! He was naked! Totally naked!” Dustin makes a sweeping gesture to emphasize his point and knocks his baseball cap off his head. “Jeesh, if he was wearing diving gear don’t you think I would have led with that? He wasn’t wearing anything. He’d have been dead in minutes if he was human!”

“You don’t think he’s human?” Little Will sounds alarmed.

“Then what do you think he was?” Mike interrupts, annoyed that their group has been dragged away from the business at hand (namely, sitting on Hawkins Dock and undertaking the very serious process of pooling their allowance money together to send away for the decoder ring set advertised on the back of Lucas’s Superman comic) by Dustin’s interruption.

Dustin snatches away one of Lucas’s Adventure Comics and points to the cover frantically.

“Aquaman! He’s Aquaman!”

“What?”

“I’m serious. He can swim in places no one can swim! And he was, like… speaking this other language. Singing, almost. He was totally talking to the fish! He was almost… he reminded me of a seal…”

“Maybe he’s an old Nazi science experiment,” Will suggests. “My brother says they were doing all kinds of things to people to try to make super-humans.”

“He’s probably a Russian spy,” Lucas says.

“Why would the Russians spy on Hawkins?” Mike asks.

“Because they hate freedom, Mike,” Lucas says with an air of authority. “They’re jealous of us being able to have ice cream and watch baseball and Space Patrol on TV whenever they want!”

“Space Patrol isn’t on anymore,” Dustin mutters sadly before shaking himself. “Which is not the point!”

“Maybe he got lost,” Little Will offers. “Maybe he was trying to reach the old army base in Dover.”

“Maybe he _came_ from the old army base in Dover,” Lucas looks up with dawning eagerness.

“Maybe he’s a figment of Dustin’s imagination,” Mike suggests. “Or just a perfectly normal guy going swimming.”

“Who’s going swimming?”

The boys are interrupted by Maxine Hargrove and immediately fall silent. She hovers awkwardly at the end of their party, unsure whether to sit or stand. Maxine is Lucas’s friend (but not his girlfriend, as Dustin was told in no uncertain terms after his mouth had gotten away from him one day) but her position in their gang is still unclear. She’s a _girl_ after all, and her father (“ _step_ -father,” as Maxine is always quick to correct) is part of one of the more terrifying sub-sets of adults - the kind who oozes barely repressed violence under his veneer of respectability. Though the boys can't always verbalize why, Maxine and her family always make them uneasy.

Lucas grins at her and stutters out an awkward hello.

“Dustin was just saying that he saw something down by the cove.”

“Was it Billy?” Maxine’s voice jumps higher, laced with worry.

“Who?”

“Billy? My brother?” Maxine adds when Lucas shows no signs of recognition.

“Billy Hargrove?” Dustin asks. “That…?” Mike shoots him a look and he cuts himself off before he calls Billy something nasty, and probably very accurate. Billy’s reputation as a mean and violent drifter is well-known, but none of the boys had apparently made the connection between Billy and his sister. Stupid, really, but then the two step-siblings were so very different, and hardly ever seen together…

“He ran away. No one’s seen him.”

“Did he take the boat?” Lucas asks.

“Yes. My step-father wants the law on him for stealing. He made me go to Chief Hopper and report it.”

“Will Hopper put him in jail?”

“He said he’d talk to him if he finds him. But nobody’s seen him!”

“Maybe he drowned,” Dustin interjects. Maxine's brows furrow and Lucas smacks Dustin in the arm.

“Maybe he’s your Russian fish-monster,” Mike suggests.

“Your what?” Maxine asks.

Mike heaves a long sigh as Dustin fills her in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short little chapter for you guys - I wanted to include some of the Party in this and hint at coming events. As always, comments and kudos are appreciated!


	4. Fishing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I've had the flu this past week and had nothing else to do but write, and as a result this story has morphed into the twisted product of my fevered imagination and is bit darker than I had originally intended - woo hoo! ANGST FOR DAYS!
> 
> Chapter warnings for smut, a bit of violence, and for implied consent issues which I didn't intend to unpack but which seem to be a big part of Steve's selkie-ness and Billy's issues... please check updated tags. 
> 
> If you'd like something a little fluffier, please check out my other Harringrove fic at:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/13767897/chapters/31643046 ...Shameless self-promotion!

They spend the first few days making the place livable.

Steve stays close to Billy, or Billy stays close to Steve – it’s hard to tell who does what. It makes it difficult to get things done quickly when they’re always tripping over each other, but neither one can seem to help it.

Steve appears unsure about his role, his relationship with Billy, and his ability to adapt to his surroundings. He seems particularly concerned about Billy's expectations. He puts on a brave front, but his arms often twitch up and wrap themselves around his body in a clear attempt to self-comfort. He looks up at Billy with questions in his eyes and Billy struggles to provide him with answers.

Steve likes biscuits and fish, is indifferent to onions, is confused by soup, and drinks as much tea as Billy can give him. He watches Billy cook and tries to help him, and soon grows quite handy with the stove.

Steve cannot read, but he enjoys listening to Billy read his battered copies of _Arabian Nights_ and _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ out loud when they rest in the afternoon or after supper.

Billy gives him some hand-me-down clothes to wear and he wrinkles his nose at them.

“They’re wrong,” Steve says when Billy presses the issue. “They’re like my skin but not.”

He finds pants particularly objectionable, but finally agrees to remain at least partially clothed most of the time. The shoes he rejects completely.

Billy remains convinced on some level that if he loses sight of Steve for a moment then Steve will leave forever. He is anxious when Steve explores the cove, trailing his hands along the rocks and climbing experimentally a little way up the cliff face. He only stops climbing when Billy yells at him to get down. Steve heals quickly, quicker than a human would (his arm is not broken, thank goodness, and the bruising is all but gone by day three), but neither of them is in any hurry to see fresh bruises and cuts on Steve’s skin from a fall.

It takes a lot for Billy to agree to let Steve go swimming. Despite claiming a selkie mate, Billy hadn’t even considered it an option that Steve would go into the water, into unfamiliar depths where he could not follow.

When Steve tries on their fourth day together, shedding his clothes and marching towards the sea, Billy takes him none too gently by the arm and steers him back indoors. They both spend the rest of the day inside – Billy working, Steve pondering.

That night Billy sits them both down in front of the stove and checks Steve’s bruises and bandages with extraordinary care, reveling in the sensation of touch. He had told himself that they wouldn’t do anything intimate tonight, just like they hadn’t the last three nights. In fact, they hadn’t done anything since the first time, that first day on the rocks. Steve still has wounds that need tending and, though he hasn’t said much of anything these past few days, he's probably still mad at Billy for… various reasons.

For hurting him. For being greedy. For taking him away from the sea. For not listening and not asking about any number of small yet important things.

Billy wants to make it up to Steve.

Steve is his, Billy has his skin, but he doesn’t want to… he isn’t a rapist. He will listen and he will ask and he will be respectful about about this one important thing.

Billy is weak, though. He can’t deny himself the opportunity to touch Steve, albeit in a (nearly) clinical way, under the guise of care.

Steve doesn’t resist… in fact, he leans in, trembles under Billy’s touch, and his gaze warms with desire. Perhaps they are both a bit touch-starved.

Lonely Billy. Newly human Steve.

Before Billy realizes it, Steve’s mouth is on his and he is seeking, demanding entrance with his tongue. Billy submits, lets Steve lead, lets Steve pull him down on the shed floor. Soon Billy is sprawled out under Steve and Steve is riding him. The tight clench is enough to make Billy cry out, and Steve moves at his own terrible pace, alternately slow and fast, always driving them both to agonizing bliss whatever he chooses to do. Steve rocks up and down, illuminated by the firelight from the grate, mouth open and head tilted back.

He looks like an angel, Billy thinks. Like an angel but better, more beautiful, more real.

Their cries of pleasure echo strangely in the small cabin, harmonizing with the distant sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

Steve collapses on top of him as Billy cums, a weird reversal of their positions from that first time on the rocks. He lets out a whimper and follows soon after, his hand and Billy's both wrapped around his cock.

Billy has barely come down from his orgasm when Steve, still bent over double, Billy’s softening cock filling him, whispers in his ear.

“Please, Billy. Please can I go into the water tomorrow?”

It’s such an obviously manipulative tactic, and Billy should perhaps be angry. He isn’t, however. He desperately wants to feel used and hurt, but instead all he feels is shame. His stomach drops with a weird leaden mix of fear and guilt because he understands completely, sees the situation clearly. It is the most fair and simple request Steve can make – to swim, to be himself, to have this little bit of freedom – and it is spoken in such a painfully plaintive way.

Intellectually, Billy knows that he can’t keep Steve locked away forever. Eventually he’ll have to go fishing, he’ll have to go to town and get supplies, and when he does he’ll have to chain Steve to the anchor in the shed (which they still haven’t been able to move), or bring him with him to a place full of other people (which seems like an amazing impossibility), or leave him and simply trust that he will wait for Billy’s return.

Billy finds he can’t do it. He can’t allow himself to grow soft, no matter how much Steve wants it. It’s not that Billy himself doesn’t want to… it’s just that he doesn’t seem capable of it. How do you demand a drowning man release his last gulp of air? He holds Steve close and says nothing, and the next day when Steve walks towards the sea, Billy barks out a command to stay on the beach.

Steve stares at the water like his heart is breaking, but he obeys, dropping to his knees and running his fingers through the sand.

That night Billy pushes Steve down on his hands and knees and takes him rough and fast from behind, like he can force his claim, can spark Steve’s love if he just demands it in the most base and animalistic way possible.

They nearly break the cot Billy has fashioned together as Billy pounds into Steve, hitting his pleasure spot again and again and biting down on Steve’s shoulder, bruising but not breaking the skin. His fingers wrap around Steve’s wrists and he presses down. He holds, he keeps.

He brings Steve off in spectacular fashion, tearing his orgasm from him and reveling in Steve’s broken cry before pulling out to cum all over Steve’s beautiful back, coating him in thick ropes of release, marking him, owning him. They don’t wash off afterwards and they are sticky and stuck together when they wake up the next day.

Part of Billy would like for Steve to fight and argue, to give Billy something to push back against. In the morning, however, Steve just looks drained. They spend the day quietly, shoring up the shed’s frame and patching up holes in the wall.

At lunchtime Billy bends down for a kiss and Steve pushes him away weakly. Billy doesn’t press the issue.

After supper that night they stay up and look at the stars outside, and Billy pulls Steve close and presses his lips to Steve’s skin. Steve doesn’t fight, and he doesn’t resist, and he doesn’t react at all… he submits, gaze empty and fixed on the stars above them.

It isn’t what Billy wants. Eventually he gives up and goes back inside. Frustrated and angry with Steve and with himself, he curls up in bed. Steve joins him soon after, but they don’t touch, and as Steve sleeps Billy lies awake all night long, struggling with his fears.

The next day Billy tells Steve he can go swimming, but that he has be careful and stay within sight of the shore. The warmth of Steve’s bright answering smile is so profound that Billy wonders why he ever tried to keep Steve away from the water in the first place.

 

 

They are fixing up the shed, or at least Billy is. Steve helps, but tends to lose interest quickly if Billy doesn’t make a point of consistently introducing new (and preferably shiny) objects or ideas for Steve to mull over. Steve wants to explore all the time, to touch and know every part of their little world. Pretty or interesting rocks take up his full attention, he gazes up at the clouds and the sky for long stretches of time, and he studies the cliff-face, the shed, Billy himself.

It would make Billy impossibly anxious if it wasn’t so endearing to see Steve investigate, with meticulous care and boundless energy, the whole new universe around him.

At the moment he is taking the tools out of Billy’s toolbox one at a time, studying them in great detail, and arranging them in some sort of order that Billy can't make heads or tails of. It is making it somewhat difficult for Billy to measure and saw the board he is working with, and so, desperate, he tries to distract the selkie with some conversation.

“Steve?”

Steve looks up from where he has built an elaborate structure out of Billy’s metal files.

“How come you speak English so good, if you’re a seal most of the time?”

“Sound carries.”

“What?”

“On the water. Sound carries. I follow boats sometimes and listen. It’s not hard to learn.”

“You learned it from sailors? I’d kind of expect you to have more…” Billy waves his free hand, searching for a way to phrase this delicately. “…Um, salty language?”

It’s not that Steve is not well-spoken. He understands quite a bit. But his grasp of language is also very basic, and he sometimes gets curious things wrong, or doesn’t understand certain words or phrases. Billy has never heard Steve swear.

Steve cocks his head and looks at him, and Billy knows that ‘salty language’ is one of those phrases that’s going to need to be explained. Thankfully Steve continues before Billy is forced to do so.

“I think it is you, too.”

Now it’s Billy’s turn to look confused. Steve shrugs.

“I can usually understand humans, even when they speak in different tongues. I think it’s something,” he motions to his head, and then runs a hand down his bare chest, “inside. For selkies.”

The file tower collapses, and Steve grins at his small pile of rubble.

“I can feel it like a…vibration?” Steve adds after a moment, thoughtful. “Is vibration good? Yeah. I echo.”

Billy huffs at that and turns his attention back to his work, though he still manages to keep one eye on Steve. He is so _aware_ of Steve, all the time… it’s insane.

He’d told Steve when they’d had breakfast this morning that he’d have to wear clothes while they were working on the shed, but now he doesn’t know why he bothered. Billy had shed his own shirt very quickly in the heat, and Steve had quickly followed his example. Not that Billy really minds the view.

He should take Steve somewhere, he thinks. Take Steve out.

Steve loves new sights, new sounds, new smells. He knows enough English to get by.

The idea, as soon as it occurs to Billy, fills him with dread. There are all sorts of people out there in the world, all sorts of things. What if someone or something was to hurt Steve… or tempt him away. He’d lose Steve, he’d be alone…

Nonsense, Billy thinks. Paranoia. And it’s just a thought. Nothing solid. And Steve has Billy. Steve would be fine out there in the big bad world for a (very) short while. Hawkins isn’t so bad, it’s not the big city…

Except…

“I’m going to teach you how to fight.”

Steve gives Billy a quizzical side-eye, his fingers twitching with that constant nervous energy he has. It’s in moments like these when Steve looks the most seal-like. Billy nods to himself, liking the idea more and more. He puts down his saw, his project forgotten, and starts towards a clear space on the beach free of tools and rocks.

“Why?” Steve asks, standing and following a few steps behind.

“It’s important.” _Could be very important_.

“You want me to fight?”

“No, not… I just want you to be _able_ to fight. To defend yourself,” Billy adds when Steve looks unsure.

“From you?”

“No, not from me! I would never hurt you, Steve. I told you I wouldn’t, and I won’t!”

Steve still looks unconvinced, and Billy sighs. He really doesn’t want to float the idea of Steve leaving the cove… he doesn’t want to deal with the disappointment if (when) it doesn’t happen.

“I just want you to be safe from… from whatever is out there. You’re not in the ocean anymore, Steve.”

“The ocean is much more dangerous than land. I will be fine.”

“Look, love… there are still predators out here, on land. I’m going to take care of you, always.” The idea warms Billy’s insides...especially that concept of _always_. “But you still need to know these things.”

_Don’t be a goddamn nancy-boy, you useless… fight!_

_Get up, Billy!_

_Stop crying, Billy!_

_Be a man, Billy_.

Billy grits his teeth and tries to drown out the echoes of his past, to focus on the issue at hand.

 _I won’t let anyone take you away from me_.

“Look,” Billy huffs and tries a different tactic. “Look… what did you do before? What did you used to do when there were predators around?”

Steve goes very still, suddenly. He narrows his eyes and fixes his gaze on Billy.

“I’d escape from the land into the water. I’d swim away.”

Billy feels his insides drop. The silence that follows is deafening. He knows they are both imagining the same moment on the rocks, the two of them fighting to get to Steve’s skin first.

Billy has not forgotten the bruises. The rope. The seal skin buried in Billy’s secret place, the tether that still binds Steve to him.

Billy clears his throat and nods.

“Alright. What about an ocean predator? What do you do when you can’t swim away?”

Steve’s gaze never wavers. His voice remains a cool, distant warning.

“I catch them in my teeth. I drag them down. Down, into the black. They bleed out in the darkness.”

It’s all Billy can do not to shiver.

“Well…” he croaks. “Um, well, you can’t do that up here.”

“No,” Steve’s tone is somewhere between wistful and accusatory. “I can’t. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

He’s right. Billy has to admit he’s right. All the more reason to find out, though, for his sake and for Steve’s. He should know what his boy can do.

Billy coughs and adopts the knowing look he has often seen on Steve. “Right, so, you need to learn how to fight. Put your hands up.”

Steve blinks at him and then, after a long moment, obeys.

“Okay… now hold them like this…”

Steve is pliant as Billy talks him through the basics. However, when the time comes to practice what he’s learned, he is wholly unenthusiastic. He keeps darting and ducking and dropping his fists down instead of attacking, and it frustrates Billy to no end.

“Stop, stop! Look, just…plant your feet. Dig your heels in and draw a charge.”

“What’s that? A charge? Draw?”

“You force your opponent to throw himself at you, to charge at you. Once he’s committed to the move, he’s vulnerable, he can’t readjust if you counter. Like… like lying in wait. You’re luring him in, trying to get him to make a mistake. Just keep your hands up. And stay still. You know how to do that, right?”

“Only when I’m sleeping,” Steve murmurs, his eyes flicking over to the not too distant shoreline. “No… in the sea everything is always moving. Always. Constant. You must be fast.”

“That’s in the water, sweetheart," Billy replies, wiping sweat off his temple. "On land you have to stand your ground.”

Steve considers this.

“You fight. You fight many?”

Billy reaches over and adjusts Steve’s stance, doesn’t meet his eyes. “You fight ‘often’, Steve. ‘Often’. Not ‘many’.”

“You fight often,” Steve amends. He is not asking.

“My fair share.”

“If you lose, what? What next?”

Billy remembers being younger than he is now, being small. He remembers his dad, and thinking that this was the end, that he was going to die. He remembers a night not so long ago when a stray shard of glass sliced his ear and he dripped tears and blood into the water.

“If you lose you get up and you move on. If you get a chance you go again... until you win.”

“In the sea if you lose you get eaten. Fast is better than stay still.”

“Better than _staying_ still.”

“You agree?”

Billy is forced to chuckle at the selkie’s round-about argument. “I’m not saying it isn’t good to move sometimes. But first things first, okay?”

Steve shrugs and puts his hands up again.

“Good. Now dig your heels in.”

Steve’s heel pushes back in the sand and without warning his fist swings out and connects squarely with Billy’s jaw. Billy, caught by surprise, loses his balance and falls flat on his rear.

It takes a moment for Billy’s vision to clear, for the red mist, always rising automatically whenever he feels threatened, to dissipate. When it does he sees Steve holding his hands out, palms open, in apology. He looks horrified. Frightened.

“I guess there’s some fire in you after all, huh?” Billy manages to chuckle, though he’s not sure how sincere it sounds.

Steve’s eyes widen, and without a word he takes off for the water.

“Steve!”

 

 

Steve is a long time in the water. Billy puts all his tools, his half-finished projects and best-laid plans away for the night. Paces back and forth on the beach, and finally decides to build a small fire outside. So Steve can find him. Like Steve isn’t perfectly aware where the cove is. Like Steve needs help, needs him.

It’s typical, Billy thinks. Billy is the one who gets punched, and it’s Steve who gets spooked. What did he think Billy was going to do?

_Hit back, obviously. And you thought about it, didn’t you? You thought about it, you rotten bastard._

_He'd looked scared. Scared of what? Of you? Of a hit? A hurt?_

_Don't insult him. He's not a coward. He hasn't cried, he hasn't run, he hasn't flinched from you since that first day._

_So what is he afraid of? Of fighting in general?_

_Of what he had done?_

Billy waits as evening turns to twilight, and twilight turns to night. The stars come out, and the moon, and eventually a figure emerges from the water and walks towards the shore.

He comes close to Billy and stands in the shadows, away from the flickering of firelight, for a good long while. Billy says nothing, waits, drinks his brandy. He can see Steve's arms moving in that anxious way they do, but he can't see his face.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says finally, quietly.

“I’m not mad, pretty.” And Billy isn't mad, truly. He lets acceptance, forgiveness, a little bit of relief leak into his voice. “I asked you to, after all. I wish you hadn’t run away after, but you came back. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not supposed to hurt you,” Steve says. It sounds like a lesson learned by rote and it is spoken like a child recites a prayer. “I bring good. I comfort. I’m not supposed to hurt you.”

Billy watches his lover for a moment, trying to make out his face in the shadows, trying to process this. Must be a selkie thing.

After a moment he shrugs. “I asked you to,” he says again. “I wanted to know. You didn’t hurt me in any permanent way, sweetheart. Just gave me a scare when you took off.”

Steve nods, shuffling his feet. “I needed to swim. I don’t like fighting,” he murmurs. He sits down by the fire and wraps his arms around his knees. “I’m not good at it.”

“You’re pretty good at it. Landed one on me.”

Steve snorts. Billy thinks it’s as close as the selkie has come to outright laughing since that first day on the beach when Billy chased him. He decides he is going to change that, is going to make a point of making Steve laugh more.

“It’s too…” Steve pauses, searching for words. “Too much. It takes too much. Fighting. It hurts.”

“It comes at a cost,” Billy supplies.

“Yes,” Steve agrees after a moment. “To everyone. Predator and prey.”

Billy considers this, and then shrugs. “I guess. You need it though. In this world you need to know how.”

“How did you learn?” Steve asks.

Billy is silent for a long time, his eyes fixed on the stars. “My father taught me some. I learned the rest from a friend.”

“Father?”

“Yeah, my dad.”

“Dead?”

“No, he’s still alive.”

Steve considers this. He rocks back and forth a little, his long fingers twisting nervously in front of him.

"Mother?" he asks, finally.

Billy feels himself go cold inside. She's always been such a painful topic in the Hargrove household that now that he's being asked a genuine question about her he doesn't quite know what to say. He takes another swig of booze.

"She's gone. She died. A long time ago. It was sudden. One day I woke up and she was gone. I was eleven."

Steve looks at Billy, his dark eyes glittering in the firelight. He doesn't say he's sorry, but Billy neither wants nor expects him to. He looks sad, though. He stretches a hand out across the sand, offering comfort. Billy lets himself take it. He wraps his fingers around Steve's and rubs circles on his skin with a calloused thumb.

“Where is he? Your father? Why are you not with him?” Steve asks.

Billy sighs and shoots Steve a grin. Steve knows he’s going for sleazy-seductive, but to the selkie’s eyes Billy just looks tired.

“Why would I need my dad, sweetheart? I have you.”

Man and selkie gaze at each other, the sound of the waves crashing on the shore matching the roaring feeling inside of them.

“Yes,” Steve says finally.

“You have me.”

 

 

The time comes when they need more money. Billy is good at stretching their savings, but a little infusion of cash wouldn’t go amiss. One or two good catches, a good salmon or a tuna, and they would be set for a while.

The idea appeals to Billy. Besides, he’s been itching to go out on the boat, to sail and drift and feel the sea air on his face like the old days.

Only this time he has a friend to come with him.

Billy packs a lunch, wheedles Steve into his trousers and boots (which Steve sheds just as soon as they are far enough away from home, sticking his tongue out at Billy and giggling), and sets off with his selkie just before dawn. The two of them push The Hurricane out together, and as they get underway Billy takes the helm while Steve roams from bow to stern before finally settling down.

Billy steers the boat out to the inlet where he usually leaves his first set of nets. Steve is thrilled to be out on the water, laughing, trailing his fingers in the water, occasionally babbling something in a language Billy doesn’t understand. Gulls screech above them and the sun beats down, and Billy feels an old familiar thrill, can taste freedom in the air.

When he reaches the first of the nets, however, he finds disaster. They are torn apart, shredded by some unknown, overlarge creature.

This happens, sometimes, but it’s devastating nonetheless. It’s time lost, and no small amount of work repairing the nets, and if Billy hadn’t been so busy chasing after his selkie lover he would have checked them sooner…

Steve looks up at Billy, watches as anger, frustration, and self-doubt play across his features. Billy pulls up the nets and tosses them into a corner for later repairs, repairs which he will have to do himself, by hand.

Steve doesn’t say anything. He’s gotten better at reading Billy’s moods. He only eyes the nets thoughtfully as Billy storms back to the helm and sets course for his second fishing spot.

The next nets are worse than torn – they’re gone completely. Swept away by the tide or a animal… or maybe some other unscrupulous fisherman just up and took them when Billy wasn’t around.

It’s a streak of bad luck at the worst possible time, right when they need the money, when Billy doesn’t have a family unit to fall back on, when Billy can’t leave Steve for a few weeks and go to the city to look for work.

It’s enough to make Billy want to cry.

He doesn’t cry, though. He swears violently and yells and kicks a heavy bucket across the deck with such force it nearly breaks his toe. The projectile narrowly misses Steve’s head before landing in the water.

Casting an unimpressed look towards his lover, Steve huffs and slides off the side of the boat into the sea.

“Wait!”

The word is out before Billy can stop it, and it sounds as miserable, as terrified as he feels. He watches as Steve’s long legs disappear under the ocean’s surface, and his heart jumps up to his throat when he resurfaces.

Steve tosses the offending bucket back onto the boat and then pulls himself up and out of the water.

“What… what?” he grumbles in his strange cadence, not bothering to conceal his annoyance. “Where did you think I was going? Eh? Ridiculous boy.”

Billy lets out a whoosh of air, rubs the sides of his temples. He is nearly shaking with sudden relief. Steve takes that in, eyes narrowing and then widening in realization.

“Where did you think I was going?” Steve asks, his voice softer, made gentle by a new understanding. “Huh?”

Billy shakes his head, walks over to where Steve is sprawled out on the deck, dripping wet but rapidly drying in the sun, and sits down on an empty crate next to him.

That vague negative shake of the head is all he has, all he can muster.

He can’t seem to find the words to say what he wants to say, to beg Steve not to leave him even though he’s a failure, even though he tied Steve up in a fishing shack and stole his skin and now can’t find a way to feed them both.

He can’t seem to say that his whole life has been one hit after another, bad day after bad day until the day he met Steve and finally understood at long last that things could different, that things could change, that the world is full of magic and secrets and beauty.

He can’t tell Steve that he’s always been just barely holding on by the very tips of his fingers, and that some days it’s all he can do to not let go, to not drop into the swirling black abyss.

He can’t find the words to say any of that. He just sits and lets his hands dangle limply between his knees, lets the old familiar rage and pain drain out onto the deck like so much spilled oil.

Steve hears him, anyway. He has always heard and understood Billy’s tears. They were what brought him to Billy in the first place.

Steve reaches up, up, with long, slender fingers dripping with with salt water.

He touches Billy’s cheek and the outside world, the boat, the broken nets… they all fade away.

Billy is drifting down, Steve is drifting up, and they meet in the middle, catch each other in a kiss.

The kiss deepens. Billy lets Steve control it, Steve’s tongue lapping inside his mouth, claiming, soothing. Billy isn’t sure if Steve pulls him down or if he lifts Steve up but either way they’re both on the deck and Steve is soon in Billy’s lap, his face pressed against his chest, rocking.

The sunlight is so bright, and the water breaks gently against the boat, an unrhythmic rhythm. Everything feels like a dream.

Billy knows what he wants to do.

He goes down on his knees and pushed Steve gently back onto the boat deck. He nuzzles Steve’s neck, presses gentle kisses all over, on his throat, on his shoulders and chest, then down to his nipples. He licks and sucks and nibbles at them until they are pert and sensitive, and then he goes down, further and further to the vee of Steve's hips and the patch of hair and his cock.

Steve is half hard already, his sweet member (and it is sweet, Billy thinks, it’s a silly word for it but it’s true, Steve’s cock is the prettiest thing, the nicest thing to touch and caress and love) plumping and twitching under Billy’s ministrations, and the sight gives Billy a strange kind of unselfish pleasure.

He ducks his head down and laps at Steve’s balls. He gives them kittenish licks at first, ones that punch out little ‘ahs’ from Steve, before pursuing them with more intent, taking them into his mouth and suckling on them gently. He presses a finger to Steve’s perineum and then draws away and swipes his tongue in a long, deliberate line up Steve’s cock. Steve moans in earnest then, and Billy lets his eyes flick up to watch Steve panting.

He is not through teasing yet… but the sunlight and sea air have slowed everything down to the point where taking his time seems right, a gift rather than an act of cruel denial.

He suckles the head of Steve’s cock, making obscene slurping noises to match Steve’s whine. He is so hard now himself that it is almost painful, yet even in this it is a pleasure to wait, to remain in a limbo state, on the knife’s edge.

When he finally takes all of his lover into his mouth and sucks hard, Steve wails. Steve’s voice is nearly a song itself, a sweet, unearthly melody. Billy works him over at a steady pace, bobbing his head up and down and taking more and more of Steve in. Eventually Steve’s cock is hitting the back of Billy’s throat and Billy’s nose is brushing hair and sweat and skin.

The act is not rushed but it still carries with it an undercurrent of desperate desire. Billy is no longer teasing but he is still drifting as if in a dream.

Steve is so beautiful like this, his face screwed up with pleasure, his eyes wide, tears mixing with sweat and getting caught in threads of golden brown hair, glinting in the sunlight. Billy isn’t sure he’s ever seen anything so beautiful. He feels at home with his lips wrapped obscenely around Steve’s cock, tasting pre-cum as his selkie makes the most amazing sounds.

“Billy…”

Damnation, even the way Steve says his name is like a breath-taking blasphemy.

“Billy, Billy, Billy…” It’s a chant, it’s a warning, Billy can feel Steve tighten up a moment before he cums, but he doesn’t stop sucking, he takes Steve deeper and he swallows the release that pulses down his throat. Steve lets out a scream of pleasure that sends a nearby flock of gulls flying in a loop away from them.

The long, filthy moan that follows nearly makes Billy choke. His own hand drifts down and presses against his erection and apparently that’s all it takes to make him cream his pants like a young schoolboy having a wet dream.

Billy doesn’t mind.

In the sunlight, surrounded by the lapping waves, stretched out on Billy’s rusty old boat, Steve looks like a gift from God. He is so long, his skin is so perfect, his eyes are so warm… he is breath-taking.

Trembling from his own release, Billy keeps Steve’s cock tenderly enfolded in his mouth, letting his tongue run soothingly over flesh. He waits until Steve is utterly spent and is letting out little whimpers from over-sensitivity before pulling off.

Billy is shaken from having watched Steve let go in that way. He feels that they have both been exposed somehow, but only to God and the ocean and each other.

He feels like he’s witnessed something extraordinary, but the extraordinary thing is what happens next.

Steve stretches, pulls himself over to the edge of the boat, smiles down at the water and then looks over to Billy.

The song at the edge of Billy’s consciousness, the lazy tune drifting across the water, materializes now in his selkie lover’s mouth. Steve lets his hand drop towards the water and drift along the surface, and as he does, he sings.

Billy doesn’t understand the words – they are in another language, sometimes half hummed and whispered so that he can barely hear them anyway – but the song itself is familiar.

It reminds him of his mother, yet at the same time it is not a song she ever sang, or that Billy can ever remember hearing before. Rather it is a familiar song in that it strikes Billy at his core and makes his heart sing an answer back.

The Hurricane drifts lazily towards the last of Billy’s nets.

 

 

They’ve caught three salmon, beautiful and massive, and Billy is in shock.

“Did you do this?” he asks, awed and slightly alarmed. “Did you witch me?”

Steve smiles from where he is stretched out, sunning himself. After the last words of his song had faded across the waves Steve had slipped off the boat into the sea for a swim, leaving Billy to pull himself together (his pants are sticky and ruined, but Billy can’t help that) and draw up the last of the nets on his own. Convinced that these would be wrecked like the others, Billy is in awe of what he finds. He is still staring at the fish when Steve pulls himself back on board, clean and soft-eyed and relaxed.

“I didn’t witch you. I kissed you and you put your mouth on my penis until I had pleasure.”

“Okay…” Fair enough (and Billy would have to remember to work on Steve’s smut-related vocabulary later). “But look at this. This isn’t even a good place for salmon. The fish...”

“I didn’t ‘witch’ the fish. I sang to the sea and the sea answered. I sang to the fish and they came to the nets.”

Billy stares in wonder at the catch before him.

Steve adds, thoughtfully, a bit unsure, “I suppose it is witching, though. I suppose it is magic. I never thought of it like that because it’s something I always do.”

His tone shifts from uncertainty to worry. “It’s not bad, is it? It’s just something I can do. I can sing. It’s not wrong?”

Billy shakes his head. “No, love. It’s not wrong. It’s wonderful.”

Steve’s whole body drains of tension and Billy considers the possibility that this is all as new to Steve as it is to him. It also occurs to him that Steve is still a little afraid of him.

Billy has learned a few things about Steve over the past weeks. Steve is gentle, forgiving, and patient, even when Billy is irritable, obtuse, angry at everyone and everything for no real reason at all.

Steve knows a little bit about the world around him, and he is curious and tenacious when faced with new things, but human behavior is sometimes still a mystery to him and living with Billy is itself not always the easiest task.

He doesn’t always know what will please or upset Billy. He watches closely, and treads carefully, and seems hyper-conscious of his own perceived failings.

Billy has learned that Steve is beautiful in every way.

Billy brings them back in to shore and helps a shaky Steve to his feet. The selkie looks slightly drained and struggles with his legs more than he usually does.

“What’s wrong, love?”

Steve shrugs, grins sheepishly. “It’s hard to do things in my human skin. Takes more from me when I do things like sing. It never used to be hard.”

Things are so very different for Steve now.

Without another word, Billy scoops Steve up and carries him to the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. - I know absolutely nothing about salmon fishing so if I got any technical details wrong I'm very sorry. As always, thanks for any and all kudos and comments!


	5. Wrecked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for violence and unhealthy relationships, but this time Steve is fighting back. Lots of angst.

Billy wants to do something special for Steve. He has something he needs to make up for.

Well, he actually has quite a few things he needs to make up for, though it makes him slightly ill to think of his and Steve's relationship like that. But in this instance Billy really does have to earn Steve’s forgiveness for something specific. Nothing too terrible, just a… a misunderstanding, to use the nicest term.

It really was a misunderstanding.

It had never occurred to Billy that, as Steve was effectively confined to the cove and sometimes chaffed noticeably at the restrictions Billy placed on him ( _don’t leave the cove, Steve… don’t swim so far out, Steve… be back before sunset, Steve…_ and Steve always obeyed, but with a huff and a furrowed brow and, lately, a choice word or two (taught to him by Billy, so he has no one but himself to blame for that)), Steve might be a little bit upset if Billy himself left for town on his own.

He'd mentioned the night after their fishing excursion that the salmon they had caught would fetch a good price at the market. He'd said he would be going in the morning to sort that out. Steve nodded as if he understood.

The next day Billy was up before dawn, and Steve had been sleeping so peacefully next to him that Billy had been loath to wake him. Billy pressed a gentle kiss on the selkie’s forehead and left without saying goodbye.

The fish market was how he remembered, loud and vibrant and full of pushing, pulling life. He had missed it. Missed being around people, missed getting into mischief. Missed being the old Billy Hargrove instead of the Billy (caretaker, lover, life) Steve had created.

He stays as far as he can under the radar. He has no idea if his father is looking for him or even if anyone had noticed he was gone – though the loss of the boat and the income would certainly have caused some upheaval in the Hargrove household, Neil was hardly the most attentive of parents.

It is not too hard to escape notice in the market. He ties his hair up and hides it under a cap, moves about restlessly in an uncharacteristically furtive manner. He sees the police chief, and Tommy, and a number of other pitfalls, but he avoids them easily, laughing to himself as he does so.

He’s too clever for them by half.

He sells the salmon at an excellent price, better than he had predicted. Flushed with success (the heady kind that comes after a near-defeat), he decides to treat himself to a drink at the pub. One drink turns into two, and his old pal Tommy H. comes in to the pub and recognizes him. Billy's heart jumps up to his throat but rather than turning on him, Tommy congratulates him on being the talk of the town, on being alive.

“Who said I was dead?” Billy asks.

“Well, no Billy, no boat… we all thought you drowned! Let me buy you one.”

Billy is so pleased with this stroke of luck (he’s free, he’s in the clear, no one is coming for him) that he accepts the drink, even though he hates Tommy for a whiny little rat, and even though Steve’s face, scrunched up in that adorable way he has when he’s worried, flutters on the edge of his vision.

Hours pass without him realizing, and before he knows it Chief Hopper has entered the bar and is making his way to the counter. If he sees Billy he’s a dead man for real. Even if Neil doesn’t want Billy and the boat back, pretending to be dead and then magically returning from the grave surely warrants enough of an investigation to delay Billy's return to the cove.

He should have been back… damn, he should have been back with Steve hours ago.

Billy ducks under a table before he is spotted and crawls towards the back entrance, scuttling under the feet of drunks who don’t even see him.

_If you could see me now, pops_ , he thinks grimly. _And you, Steve._

He escapes undetected, but either way he isn’t too keen to push his luck. He races out of town and down the shoreline. He is lucky, so lucky that he had stowed The Hurricane in an innocuous little pier that is all but crumbling from neglect and not too far away. He staggers on board, shoves off, and heads for the home, though he is still drunk enough to nearly make Tommy’s assumptions about his death a cold hard reality several times before he manages to steer his way back to the cove.

Night has fallen by the time he lands.

He can see from the water that the hut is dark and cold, and the sight sends a shiver of terror up his spine. He jumps off the boat, nearly face-planting in the sand as he does so, and rushes towards the shed.

The inside of the shelter is trashed, and Steve is missing. 

 

 

Billy feels like he’s losing his mind. Steve has to come back… he _has_ to! Billy has his skin, Billy has Steve, and unless every single story his mother ever told him was complete bullshit…!

Steve can't run away... but what if someone took him...?

No.

No, he must be in the water. He must be swimming.

Frantic minutes turn into hours and all Billy can do is wait, and pace, and curse Steve, and berate himself for his own carelessness. He swears he will chain Steve to the anchor when he comes back, he swears that he himself will never leave the cove again. Even Tommy becomes a target for Billy’s useless ire, and he loudly rattles off every blasphemy he knows as he waits, and waits, and waits.

He is so strung out by the time Steve returns that he almost misses him in the darkness. It is only because the moon is full that he can see a dark shape finally emerge from the water and make its way up the sand towards the shed.

When Billy sees him, finally, he rushes forward, weak-kneed with relief. Something in Steve’s gait gives him pause, however.

_That’s not my Steve_.

The creature isn’t walking towards him with Steve’s usual awkward grace. Its movements are almost lumbering, weary, awkward, favoring one side. It pauses in its journey when it spots Billy and stands unnaturally still, almost frozen in place. It doesn’t seem to fit in its form…

_It doesn’t seem comfortable in its skin._

But it is Steve. It's the selkie. Billy senses it in his soul, and he can see the outlines of the face that had become so familiar to him over the past month.

It is Steve… a struggling, strange, unhappy Steve who is looking at Billy like he is an alien being.

“Steve," Billy croaks out. "Love. Where have you been?”

Billy moves towards him but stops, suddenly. In the moonlight, he can see a trickle of something black and glittering above Steve’s elbow.

“Sweetheart, what’s that on your arm?”

Steve looks down and tilts his arm for a better look.

“Blood. Shark,” Steve answers. His voice is raspy, pained. “I got away. I almost didn’t. I’m not fast enough in this form. I scraped against his skin.”

Billy wants to move forward, wants to tend to and comfort his beloved, but something about Steve’s stillness stops him.

When Steve speaks again horror falls like a rock in Billy’s stomach.

"You left me."

A cold wind blows off the sea, but it’s Steve’s voice that chills Billy to his core.

“Baby…I didn’t…”

“I can’t stay here alone. I don’t know how. You left me.”

Billy tries again to answer but Steve cuts him off, his voice harsh, emphatic, raw with feelings of betrayal.

“I can’t stay here alone, and I can’t swim away. _I can’t swim away._ You made sure of that.”

Billy doesn’t know if selkies can cry, but it sounds like Steve is crying now. His voice is breaking and though he’s standing still he’s close enough now that Billy can see that he is in fact trembling violently with some strong emotion – pain or terror or fury.

Billy reaches out a hand, but Steve won’t come closer, won’t come into the light, just stands there vibrating, his voice rising in volume.

“I can't stay here, and I can't swim away. I belong nowhere. Not land, not sea. _Nowhere!_ You understand, you idiot child? You? You who can move anywhere and everywhere and see and love NONE of it?!”

“Steve,” Billy tries. “Sweetheart. I’m home now…”

Steve strikes out. He is slow and uncoordinated, but Billy is still drunk, as well as very surprised that Steve is resorting to violence. The punch lands, and Billy feels something around his nose give.

“This is not HOME!” Steve shouts, hysterical. “I have no HOME!”

The words might as well be knives in Billy’s heart.

He’s made this a home, he’s worked so hard to make this a home, the whole reason he went to town today was so that they could stay there for a little longer, and for Steve to reject all that with a word, after one mistake…

He doesn’t think. He ducks his head and tackles Steve to the ground. Steve kicks out against the sand and throws weak punches at Billy’s chest. Billy strikes at him, lands blows on his face and chest, but Steve keeps flailing and finally Billy has to grab him by both wrists and hold him down.

“Don’t, Steve,” he growls, enraged, leaning down with all his weight until he can feel the bones in Steve’s wrists grinding together.

“Don’t! Don’t say that! Don’t do that! THIS is your home! It’s your home and you’re not going to leave it again! _You don’t leave again!_ You try to leave and I start breaking things, you understand me?”

“Let me go!” Steve screams, still fighting. “Get off and let me go!”

“NO! Steve, stop, no…!” Billy forces Steve down, holds him down. “I’m sorry if you’re hurting but you're here and it’s not going to change! You’re mine! You’re mine! This is home, and you’re mine! Stop, Steve!”

Steve lets out a guttural howl and makes one last attempt to throw Billy off before going still, panting with rage and pain. He lurches forward and sinks sharp teeth into Billy’s shoulder, and Billy lets out a cry of his own. This isn’t the ocean, though… Steve can’t drag Billy down into the depths and consume him there. Billy accepts the pain as his due and doesn’t relent, elbows Steve in the face to make him let go and holds him down until he quiets and goes pliant and  _submits_  out of sheer weariness.

When he finally rolls off Steve, Steve rises to his feet and storms into the shed. Billy sleeps outside that night.

 

 

In the morning Billy’s nose and shirt are crusted with blood and Steve’s wrists and chest are heavily bruised. He has awkwardly bandaged the scrape on his arm from the shark and scuttles out of reach when Billy tries to change the dressing. Billy is too angry to speak for a good long while, and when his anger does finally curdle into shame and resignation, he finds that Steve refuses to respond to anything he has to say.

The lurking tension that has dogged their relationship since the moment Billy took Steve’s skin is on the surface now, floating and ugly and unavoidable, a drowned corpse returning from the depths.

Billy makes them food.

Steve eats it.

They go to opposite ends of the beach for most of the day.

Steve walks into the water to swim and stays out until all hours, glaring at Billy and daring him to object.

Billy tries to touch and talk to Steve and Steve moves away.

They share the cot when sleeping, but there are miles of distance between them when they do so.

They are hyper-aware of each other, like their first days together but different. Now they are aware of each other not because they are drawn to each other’s souls and bodies, but because they are wary, watchful, sensitive to any change in the atmosphere, any sign that it’s all going to come crashing down again.

Billy has apologized. Several times.

He’s tried to explain.

He’s blamed Steve for misunderstanding and overreacting.

On one bad night he polished off the brandy and got down on his knees and begged for Steve’s forgiveness.

The wall between them remains.

Words mean very little to Steve… but words have never been how the two of them have ever truly communicated.

Only actions will do, and Billy is, if nothing else, a man of action.

 

He is going to buy Steve a radio.

 

He decides it one day, looking at the waves and mulling over the nice little purgatory he finds himself stuck in, listening to Steve hum in the distance.

It is not such an obnoxious expense… actually, Billy has wanted a radio for some time and had been saving up for one even before Steve came into his life. Yes, when he casts around in his mind for some solution, for something that will coax Steve into loving him again, a radio is the thing that comes to mind.

It transforms itself into the Holy Grail in Billy's imagination. The only thing that will solve this particular problem.

 

He is going to buy Steve a radio. And he is going to take Steve with him when he does it.

 

His stomach is in knots and he is sweating, although the day is cool, when he tells Steve to put on his shirt, his trousers, and his shoes.

“We’re going into town. Both of us.”

Steve looks up from the porridge he has been poking unenthusiastically for the last fifteen minutes. He doesn’t answer, just cocks his head as if he cannot quite process what he is hearing.

Billy nods gruffly and barks out, before can change his mind – “Go on. Get ready.”

He goes outside while Steve scrambles to find his clothes. He needs fresh air. The fear is almost crippling.

What is he doing? He can’t do this. This is the _opposite_ of what he should do. He's breaking the one hard and fast rule he had set for himself when he first found Steve.

He can’t let Steve _out_. He can’t do this.

He has to do this. It’s the only way.

Quickly, all too quickly, Steve is outside, dressed and ready to march into a world that wants nothing more than to take him away from Billy.

Only Billy is smart, right? Too smart by half. He’s not going to let that happen.

Besides, he’s willing to risk it. He’s doing it for a worthy cause.

Billy doesn’t want Steve to be sad anymore.

He’s not going to let the world take Steve away. And he’s not going to let himself drive Steve away. He’s not going to kill Steve slowly in this cove, is not going to subject them both to death by a thousand cuts.

He looks Steve over, thoughtful (and Steve, beautiful in the morning sunlight, looks back, thoughtful), and speaks, trying to put his own chaotic emotions into words.

“I won’t leave you again. Where I go, you go. If that’s what you want.”

Steve studies his face while Billy reaches out, undoes Steve’s crooked buttons, and redoes them in the right order.

“I didn’t leave you because I wanted to. I’m sorry I left without explaining, and I’m sorry… I’m… town is… it’s dangerous for us both. I didn’t want to risk you. I know it maybe doesn’t matter, but I’m sorry if it seemed like I was leaving you behind. I was an idiot.”

_How do I fix this? How do I make this a home for you? How do I become home for you?_

Steve watches Billy in his usual way. He lifts up one hand to where Billy’s fingers are lingering on his buttons, and gently covers them with his own.

 

 

Billy’s got a plan.

They walk instead of taking the boat - it's too risky to leave the boat in town, and anyway, Billy has found a shortcut across land that will do just fine.

He doesn’t head into town, but rather skirts the cliffs and fields surrounding it until they are on the dirt road to Newby’s Hardware, a new store which has opened on the edge of Hawkins as part of the town’s sluggish expansion outwards. There will be the minimum amount of people in that store and no one he should know. And the walk will do them both good.

It should go perfectly, but immediately Steve slows them down. He keeps edging his way towards the buildings he sees in the distance, craning his neck to see.

When they reach the fields, he sees butterflies for the first time, and he is so enthralled that Billy is nearly positive that they’ll never again leave Farmer Benny’s pumpkin patch. The upshot is that Steve also says his first words to Billy in nearly a week.

“What are they?”

Billy’s insides melt, and he explains, and he isn’t even that nervous or annoyed when Steve starts chasing them around the field.

The morning has bled into the afternoon and Steve has made his fifth flower crown and they haven’t gotten nearly far enough towards their goal when Billy is finally forced put his foot down. He takes hold of Steve’s hand and pulls him along, silencing his protests by talking, by telling him all sorts of things to keep him from getting distracted.

It is initially quite awkward as Billy has never been terribly comfortable with self-expression.

He finds himself talking about things he never knew he knew, describing the town and the people and telling Steve stories about his life and childhood. He tells the selkie about the time some fishermen went missing and the whole pub turned out on a night expedition to try to find them. He tells him about Mr. Melvald and how he had embezzled church funds and run off with the minister’s daughter and now owned the General Store three towns over. He tells him about the time a bird attacked old Ms. Gillespie’s head because it thought her hair was a nest.

It seems he saw and cared more about Hawkins than he ever knew. Steve is pleased with the stories and settles down beside Billy. He seems happy to be seduced by his voice, led with his gentle grip as they walk through the fields, a stone’s throw away from the places Billy is describing.

Billy wonders if this quiet contentment means Steve has forgiven him. He is struck suddenly by the idea that Steve doesn’t need a radio. Billy could have made Steve happy just by taking him for a walk.

He isn’t sure how that makes him feel.

Soon enough they reach Newby’s, and that presents a new challenge. Inside the store row after row after row of items are on display, and Steve wants to look at all of them, from old jars of nails to the glittering new television set, the only one for sale in this tiny town.

“What do we want again?” Steve asks, looking at light bulbs with unabashed awe.

“A radio. Maybe a transistor. Tommy was telling me about them.”

“Tommy?”

“Yeah, Tommy. When I was…” Billy stops, admits to himself that it may be considered poor salesmanship to bring up the incident he is trying to earn forgiveness for at this point. “He’s a friend from town.”

Steve throws a sideways glance at Billy, then turns back to an informative display showing the science behind electricity and encouraging customers to update their wiring.

“A good friend?”

Billy pauses, tries to gauge if Steve is annoyed or jealous or just fishing for information. He has a way of draining the inflection out of his voice and it sometimes makes him hard to read.

“Here,” he says, and takes Steve’s hand. He presses Steve’s finger against the button under the electricity display and they watch the circuits connect and the model light bulb light up. Steve beams with pleasure, brighter than any bulb, and Billy has to swallow the warm feeling in his throat a few times before he can give him a proper answer.

“Not really. Tommy… he’s an ass. But he knows his radios. His dad used to work on them in the war, and he knows what the new stuff is like.”

“And radios sing?”

“Yeah. Well… they play music, and stories, and the news. We’ll get a transistor radio. They’re smaller... you can take them anywhere.”

“Like where?” Billy could swear Steve’s voice is just a little bit sad - _Where, Billy? Where is 'anywhere' when we're both prisoners?_ - and he finds himself making a number of silent promises that he is in no way sure he'll be able to keep.

“We could take it with us when we go on walks. Would you like to go on walks more? We can do that. We could take it on the boat when we go out. We can listen to it while we fish.”

Steve looks over at Billy and this time he gives him a small smile. “Don’t you like my singing?”

It’s a joke. Steve’s making a joke. Steve’s first joke. Billy feels suddenly like he could burst into song himself.

Before he can answer, though, he’s interrupted.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

Both boys turn to see a portly fellow with a cheerful face. It is Robert Newby, the proprietor of Newby's Hardware.

“Hello,” Steve says, and it only sounds a little bit like he’s been practicing saying it.

“Good morning,” Mr. Newby smiles. “Now I know Mr. Hargrove here from around town,” he throws a glance at Billy that is still friendly, if a shade warier than the one he gives Steve, “but I don’t believe I know who you are.”

“I’m Steve.”

“My friend from out west,” Billy interrupts.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Steve. Bob Newby.” Newby holds out his hand and Steve gives Billy a small heart attack by staring at it blankly for a moment before taking it and smiling beatifically at the shopkeeper.

“And what might you gentleman be interested in today? Or are we just browsing?”

“A radio,” Steve says with authority.

“A transistor radio, please,” Billy mutters, more wrong-footed and awkward then he has ever been in his life.

“An excellent choice! Now we have Regency TR-1s in stock, very reliable... but I’ve also just gotten the Raytheon’s 8-TR-1s, new in a few weeks ago…”

He is interrupted mid-sales pitch by Billy’s worst nightmare. The front door to the shop opens and suddenly the store is full of small, curious, loud children.

“Will?”

“Hi mom!”

The smallest of a group of four makes his way to the back of the shop where a tiny woman with brown hair has just emerged. She tugs him close in a hug which the boy groans about but submits to, grinning.

Steve watches with open fascination. “Mom,” he murmurs, smiling a little.

Meanwhile, one of the remaining three children, a wide-eyed boy with a mop of curly hair, is staring at Steve in a way that is making Billy extremely nervous. He elbows the boy next to him and whispers in his ear. The boy next to him seems bemused, but the curly-haired kid continues whispering with increasing urgency.

Time to go.

“Steve, come on,” Billy grabs Steve’s hand. He doesn’t care how it looks. His heart is in his throat. Steve turns and looks like he’s about to berate Billy for cutting the day short, but one look at Billy’s face stops him in his tracks.

“You’re leaving?” Mr Newby asks, confused.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“We’ll come back. I just remembered, we need to…”

The boys’ whispering is getting louder, more emphatic – the bad news for Billy is that they clearly recognize Steve from somewhere. The good news is that they are now loud enough that their whispering is distracting Newby, and as he turns to hush them Billy and Steve slip away from the group and out of the store…

…And run right into Maxine Hargrove.

“Billy!”

“Maxine,” Billy says stiffly, and she grabs him with both hands before he can move past her.

“Where have you been?! What are you…?!”

Billy yanks himself away, grabs Steve by the arm and rushes off.

They walk quickly, and when they hear the shop door open again Billy forces them into a run. He can dimly hear Maxine calling his name.

 

 

“Are they bad, Billy?” Steve manages to choke out as they race across a field and down a slope towards the docks and town.

“No. Yeah… we just need to go, okay…”

Steve is struggling. He isn’t used to running. He’s pulling away, he’s stumbling…

“Hurry, Steve.”

“No.” Dammit, this is the very worst time for Steve to get stubborn.

“I don’t have time to argue with you, sweetheart. We’re going! Hurry up.”

“But… the people…”

The people. The first human people Steve has seen up close besides Billy. They’re as miraculous to Steve as the butterflies in the field, and Billy is confusing Steve again, is taking him away from what he wants, from what he should have, all because Billy is afraid, and stupid, and slow, and afraid, afraid, small and afraid and lonely...

Billy’s insides, his head… it’s all a mess. 

He trips on a rock, and Steve trips over Billy, and the two of them tumble down the path towards the docks. Billy tries to pull himself up but Steve grabs him and pulls him back down.

They fumble against each other in a kind of protective, non-combative wrestling match, grappling with each other, trying to come to terms with themselves and what they are feeling. Frustration overwhelms Billy utterly, and he finally exhales harshly and despairs of untangling himself from Steve any time soon. He slumps down on the ground and glares at nothing, mouth twisted in a sneering frown as Steve tries to right himself.

They sit, a nearly grown man and a selkie, in the middle of a dusty footpath, the town fifty yards to one side, the beach and the water a stone’s throw away.

Steve wraps his hands around Billy’s arms, grounding him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes wide, curious, innocent. He asks like there’s an easy answer, like Billy could possibly articulate one, like…

“This was a mistake, we need to…”

"No."

"What?"

“No, it’s not a mistake,” Steve shakes his head.

“Steve…” Billy tries.

“It’s not a mistake!”

Billy feels long, clever fingers cradle his face and lets his eyes close, shutting out the world. He’s so tired, suddenly… but not so suddenly, because this has all been building up slowly from the beginning. From the day he met Steve, and even before.

Unraveling.

Why did he even bother trying?

He could see this coming since the day he was born.

“Not a mistake.” The voice is a quiet hum.

Soft lips meet his.

“Not a mistake.”

He doesn’t open his eyes. He lets the selkie kiss him, gives himself over to it. He lets Steve wash it all away, all the grimy, oily ugliness, lets him carry it all away like the tide.

He relaxes against Steve’s body and sighs.

“How do you know which way to go when you’re on your boat?” Steve murmurs against Billy’s mouth.

It takes a little while for Billy to process this question.

“What?”

“How do you find your way on the sea?”

“Lots of ways,” Billy whispers after a moment’s thought. “I know how to get to the places I’ve been before. I have a compass. And maps. And at night I can read the stars.”

Billy’s eyes are still closed but he can feel Steve’s smile against his cheek.

“You can read stars? You never told me that. Can you show me how?”

“Yeah,” Billy croaks weakly, emotion bubbling up inside of him. “Yeah, I can show you…”

“Good,” Steve replies, nuzzling against Billy’s cheek. “You can read stars. I’ve seen your compass. How else do you find your way on the sea?”

Billy doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know what Steve is getting at, doesn’t know what he wants. It feels like a riddle and he wants to protest… but he doesn’t. He’s given himself over. He’s letting Steve’s voice and Steve’s warmth and Steve’s gentleness surround him.

“What were you doing the night you cried for me?”

“Nothing,” Billy admits after a long silence, and nothing is what Billy feels like. He’s no great explorer, and he’s not a hero. He wasn’t questing, he didn’t do anything to earn the gift he was given. He’s not worthy of Steve. He’s just a boy, lost and wandering.

“I was drifting. I was letting the tide carry me.”

Steve strokes Billy’s face and Billy finally lets his eyes open. He looks at Steve’s chocolate brown irises, his lips turned up in a smile, his face warm, loving, forgiving.

Billy leans forwards and gently kisses him, an apology, a declaration, a question.

Steve answers him with his kisses and his words.

“Let go, my love. Let the tide carry you. You can let go.”

Can he? Can Billy let go? He doesn’t know… he wants to hold on. He wants to hold on to Steve, to himself, to home. Can he let go?

Steve seems to think so.

"The tide carries all things. We rise to the surface and slip under the waves again. Strong, fearful things are swept away, and life grows in deep, unexpected places. Not strong or weak, Billy... not right or wrong. It's bigger than you and me. You don't have to fight it."

Billy shakes his head. “Please, Steve, I…”

“Shhh…” Steve runs his hands down Billy’s cheek, his neck, his shoulders, back up again, soothing, comforting. “It’s alright, Billy. It’s okay.” 

The boys sit in silence for a long time as Billy slowly comes back to himself. Soon enough he grows conscious of the wind, of the sound of the waves on the shore, of Steve’s heat. He pulls away and looks at Steve.

“I won’t leave you, Steve. Until the day I die... I won't leave you. I want you to know that. You're home for me. Whatever happens, I’m yours. Where you go, I go.”

Steve studies Billy for a long moment before nodding. Billy thinks Steve understands.

 

 

Billy climbs to his feet and looks around them, pulls Steve up. It’s later than he thought – the sun is low in the sky, and the horizon is starting to go pink and orange at the edges. The boys can hear voices in the distance... people are milling about town, making their way back home from work or out to the pub to meet their friends. Their cozy spot on the beach won’t be private for much longer, it's too close to the docks and the harbor. Billy grasps Steve’s hand gently and they make their way down to the shore.

“Come on, sweetheart. We…”

“Billy!”

“Mr. Hargrove… hold up a minute, please.”

It’s Maxine and Chief Hopper, coming around the corner like judgement day.

_Aw, hell._

Billy maneuvers himself in front of Steve and adopts a sleazy casual stance he’s perfected over years of minor scraps and boyish trouble. It feels dishonest performing this act with Steve standing right next to him, somehow, especially when they’ve just had… something. Something that shattered Billy to the core.

It can’t be helped.

“Problem, officer?”

Chief Hopper gives Billy an unamused look and shakes his head, his broad form looming over Billy and Steve.

“Cut the crap, son. I…”

“Billy, where have you been?” Maxine’s eyes are wide and frantic. Billy can see a deputy officer hanging back behind them, but fortunately Max’s little friends are nowhere to be found.

“Been around, Maxine. I’ve been around.”

“I thought you were dead, you ass!” She sounds like she was actually worried, and the thought alarms and confuses Billy.

“Hey,” Hopper barks. “First things first, okay? Billy, you need to come with us. We’ve got a complaint of theft down at the station by your father…”

“My dad? What does he…?”

“He claims you stole his fishing boat and some petty cash from him. And besides all that… yes, Maxine is right, there’s a little question of where you’ve been all this time.”

Hopper side-eyes Steve, who meets his gaze with frank curiosity. When Hopper steps forward, Billy can see Steve dig his toes into the sand.

_Oh hell, he’s planting his feet_ …

“What do I have to do?” Billy interjects. He curses himself for ever teaching Steve how to fight, for bringing him this close to town, to other people.

_Talk to me, Chief… what do I have to do to keep Steve from popping you in the jaw_? _What do I have to do to keep him hidden? What do I have to do to save him?_

“You come with me, kid," Hopper replies. He sounds genuinely unsettled by the prospect, and Billy has to wonder just how much trouble he's caused by his absence. "I’ll have to book you, and then we’ll have a talk with your dad and see if we can’t sort this out. If this was just a misunderstanding then we can sort this out without any...”

“We can’t,” the words are out before Billy can stop them. He can see his dreams breaking apart like a ship being crushed in a storm. _We can’t sort this out…_

“You may have to go home for a while, and you’ll have to bring the boat back… really, kid, half the town thought you were drowned…”

He can’t, he can’t go home. Forget about the money and the boat. Forget Steve, even.

He, Billy Hargrove, cannot go home.

He’ll die there. That house is death. Home… it’s not a home. The end of Billy waits in that house, if not an end made of blood and quick viciousness then an even worse one made of cold, bitter, grinding cruelty, a day-to-day, brutally ordinary death stretching out for years and years.

That house is the loss of all the magic Billy has found these past few weeks. If he stays there, if he is forced to stay there, he will lose his true home.

Steve leans to the side and Billy can see what he’s thinking. Steve doesn’t understand. Steve isn’t from around here and he doesn’t know what will happen if he lashes out, if he parades his strangeness around. Steve doesn't see rules and boundaries - he only sees a predator, a threat, and he is preparing to act accordingly.

He needs to get Hopper away from Steve. Now.

“Okay. Okay.”

Billy pushes Steve back and takes a step forward and immediately two sets of hands upon him, Hopper’s and the deputy’s, and they’re taking him away. Maxine follows, protesting, but Billy barely registers her words.

Steve watches them go. Billy doesn’t look back, doesn’t give them any reason to question Steve, pretends that Steve is ordinary and unimportant, a bystander, a stranger.

_I won’t leave you again. Where I go, you go_.

Billy pretends that he isn’t staring down into a dark abyss.


	6. A kelson of the creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for character death, homophobia, and Steve being a badass  
> Chapter title from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (#5)

When the last of the land-men have gone, Steve slips away towards the rocks.

He strips down, stowing his clothes in a safe place (the same place he had unsuccessfully hidden his seal skin that first day he came ashore, in fact), and dives into the freezing water. The waves barely affect him – selkies, even in their human form, cannot drown. He is only dimly aware of the nuances of the ocean’s sounds and scents as he swims towards the cove and the shed, which is strange because he is usually so in touch with the sea, so aware of the complexity of its song.

He has a great deal on his mind.

His thoughts have not resolved themselves by the time he reaches the beach, nor have they faded away when he goes into the shed, lights a fire in the little stove, makes himself a cup of tea, and takes a biscuit from the biscuit tin.

All things that Billy had trained him to do. Trained him… like he’s a tamed… well, a tamed seal.

Trained... or showed?

Showed him how to take care of himself on land. Showed him how to make tea so he could have some whenever he wanted. Showed him how to tie his shoelaces and was forgiving when he threw his shoes off again and refused to wear them.

Reading to Steve when Steve asked him to. Rebuilding the shed.

Mating with him, giving him pleasure and holding him close afterwards, caressing, soothing, warming with his hands and his mouth and his body. 

Being patient when Steve didn’t understand. Being present.

Was Billy teaching him, conditioning him like you would a pet? Or is this something lovers do, a way they help each other become who they are?

Is Billy his captor or his protector?

All living creatures dream. Selkies are no exception. Steve dreams all manner of things, and always has, even before he came ashore. Sometimes he dreams of the sea, and sometimes he dreams of the stars. Sometimes he dreams the future, and sometimes he dreams of the past.

Steve had only rarely visited the shore before Billy found him. He had only had one land-friend in all his years, back when he was just a pup. His friend had been a lonely old man who called him  _barn_  and  _sonr_  and  _Steinfinnr_  and who would collect oysters and offer them up, hold them out to entice Steve closer.

He had not wanted to capture or hurt Steve, though – he had only wanted to touch.

When the old man fed Steve his shellfish and their hands met, intertwining, Steve could feel the steady murmur of this creature’s grief, deep and freezing and cruel. He marveled that the fragile human could bear all that pain.

He could hear the echoes of what the man had once been ( _faðir_ ) and the answering call of the son ( _Steinfinnr_ ) he had lost to the waves.

Steve would run his fingers over his friend’s arm and soothe him, warm him, whisper comforting tales describing where the dead go, what happens to those lost at sea, how their souls are swept up singing in the powerful ocean currents and their physical remains become coral and pearls. The old man was always very happy to see him, and that made Steve happy, too.

But the old man had also never tried to make Steve stay longer than he wanted to. Whenever Steve had moved back towards the waves the man would simply squeeze his hand once, murmur  _Steinfinnr, ek elska yðr_ , and let the selkie slip away into the water.

Steve had always known that not all land creatures were like that. He had heard tales. One selkie had gone ashore and come back decades later half dead from abuse. She had dived down into the dark, icy waters and now almost never came up for anything, terrified of the light and the land.

Another had been gone for years, a strong and beautiful female with golden hair, and when she came back she had grieved terribly the loss of a son, born of the land, whom she would only now ever see from a distance, watching from the waves.

Of course, Steve is still relatively young for a selkie. He would hear the call, perhaps, some day, and when he did he would land-walk for a time, sing his song, and learn, and suffer, and live, and love, and then return to the sea when his time was up. But the day and hour when he might feel that pull, might find the song that matched his was still far off.

Or so he had thought.

He had been swimming alone the night that had changed. It had been a night like any other.

He had felt the tears through the water. A low humming trill.

Billy’s tears, he knows now.

They plucked at his soul like fingers pluck at strings on a musical instrument, but still Steve had hesitated. The call to the land was something precious, dangerous, and he had to be sure…

And then he had smelled blood on the water, the rich tang of iron. The fingers plucking at his soul slashed across his heartstrings and sent him thrumming inside. In the blood, strangely enough, Steve had seen more than he could ever see in the tears.

He saw pain and passion, a fierce untamed thing, its leg caught in a trap but no less terrible and wonderful for all its desperation to be free, for all its wild, all-consuming desire.

Steve had never seen fire up close, but he knew about it. That was what this…  _boy_ … he felt the water, tested it for information…  _man_ … that was what  _he_  was.

_ Fire. _

And the feel of it, the smell of blood and tears, lit something inside Steve, too.

Steve hadn’t mean to go ashore for very long...that's what he told himself. Just for a little while, just to comfort  _him_  and maybe brush his hand against the flames while he was at it. He had meant to come back quickly and get on with his life as it was, get to making pups with his selkie friend, Nainsí, and keep swimming free forever in the sea he loved. He had understood that the fire-boy was not the kind of person you settle down with…

But all the long night in the water the tears and the blood called… no, not called…

Sang.

Sang and sang and sang.

Steve had felt that rush penetrate his body and soul, wash over him like the tide and pull him into an undertow.

And then the consummation had been everything Steve had dreamed.

He had been afraid when the fire-boy with the shark’s smile had turned on him, horrified when his skin had been taken. He had kept himself closed off from the other boy for a while afterwards.

Billy is dangerous like the ocean is dangerous, full of dark pain lurking in the shadows, in the depths. Steve could not afford to forget that, no matter how many cups of tea Billy made for him, or how lovely it felt when he and Billy mated.

Steve wonders sometimes if there isn’t something peculiar in himself, too… something unique that makes him call out to Billy the same way Billy calls to him.

The tears and the blood.

He wonders if there isn’t some fire in him after all, some strange spark he never knew existed before he met his human lover.

Steve has been around for a long time, much longer than Billy has been alive. His life has perhaps not been as full as Billy's, not as driven by chaotic, all-consuming feeling, but it has been long. He’ll likely be around for a good while after Billy is dead. 

Steve will find his way back to the sea, one of these days. He knows that. In his heart, he knows. His skin calls to him like a missing limb, and it will be returned to him in time… if not by Billy, then by some other force larger and wiser than the both of them. 

The world-tides bring all things back to where they belong. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but when they should, when the time is right. What is stronger - fire or water? Earth or air? Neither, none... each has its moment, its place, and then they meet. He had tried to explain that to Billy... but Billy is forever in the moment. He doesn't always see the big picture so well.

In the meantime, this is what it is. This is what Steve is meant to do. He hadn’t had to fake his upset when he had lashed out at Billy. Selkies were meant to love. Steve was meant to love Billy. He just isn’t sure what the consequences of loving Billy will ultimately be.

Steve isn’t sure what home is, now. He thought he knew. Home for him had always been a nebulous thing, loosely connected with his selkie family but without any kind of set boundaries.

How can you cage the sea? How do you house the ocean within four walls and a roof? How do you keep a hurricane in a teacup?

Home used to be just Steve, wherever Steve was at the time.

Home means something different now.

Home has split into two things, two separate things that can never truly meet, that are as impossible to marry together as heaven and hell...

The big  _out there_ , the endless, undying ocean, sweeping all things together, swirling all life in itself, the current of one’s unconscious being, the dream, the cool rush, the soft sleep, the cradle...

And the strange  _in here_ , the spark, the flame, the fire, deadly, passionate, possessive, sharp, shattered, bright, hot, fragile, beautiful, Billy.

In his dreams they are joined together through him, within him… but these are just Steve’s imaginings. His fantasies. All things dream, and Steve is no exception. But you can’t build a house upon that constantly shifting space where the waves meet the shore.

Steve can’t see how either home is a home he can live without. And now he understands that to be a selkie is to always be torn in two.

Billy is walking towards his old home, towards the Hargrove family cottage, the knife he always kept secreted in his boot in his hand now. He’s out of Hawkins jail, he’s been bailed, he called in a favor from Tommy H. and walked free six hours after his arrest with a stern warning from the Chief and the promise of further prosecution once Neil makes his statement. Maxine went home a while ago with Susan, and they are no doubt both running to tell Neil all about the goings-on.

“If I were you, son, I’d talk it through with your father," Hopper offers as Billy marches out the door. "I get that tempers run high and people say things they regret, but I don’t see why this can’t be sorted out without involving the law. He probably just wants you to come home, kid.”

And now he’s walking to the cottage, murder on his mind.

He’s going to fix this, although he knows in his heart of hearts that it’s all over now. He can’t kill his father. He can’t stop Neil from locking him up and throwing away the key. Even if he could raise his hand and strike down those cold eyes burning with hate, he’d never be able to get away with murder. Not when he is the only logical suspect.

There’s got to be another way…

_ He’ll get the boat. He’ll run, get on the boat and go. He’ll take Steve… _

_ Steve… _

Steve, who had stood silently assessing the situation while Billy was accused of theft. Steve, who had planted his feet like he was going to draw a charge. Steve, who had slipped away without a murmur when Hopper took Billy away.

Steve, who is beautiful, who is a prisoner, who is as untameable as the sea. Billy knows he must be long gone by now.

_ He can’t leave, you have his skin… _

It doesn’t matter. Steve can still go, flee Hawkins and go live somewhere else. Anyone could have him, he could have anyone… he’s sweet and beautiful and any man or woman who found him would be a fool to let him go. He’ll find someone who can give him more than Billy could ever hope to…

“Billy!”

He's nearly at the cottage... all the lights are still on and Maxine is running towards him. Belatedly, he tucks his knife away in his jacket. He can see Susan behind Max, standing in the front doorway of the house and crying.

“Where is he, Max?”

“Billy…”

“Get out of my way.”

“He’s dead, Billy!”

_ Earlier _

Neil Hargrove was bitterly pleased with himself.

He had proven himself to be what he had secretly doubted he was – the man, the patriarch, the ruler of his little world. He had brought that ungrateful pup to heel, and his son would either make good on what he had taken or rot in Hawkins jail.

None would now question that Neil Hargrove always got what he was owed.

When the door to the cottage opens Neil expects it to be Susan and Maxine, back with news of Billy. He does not bother to turn around from his seat by the fire, and instead entrenches himself more deeply in his chair and barks out a brisk – “Ale, Maxine!”

Maxine (he assumes) does not respond, but instead shuffles to the cupboard and begins rummaging. In a moment, a cup of water is placed in Neil Hargrove’s hand.

“I said ale, you miserable…!”

Neil turns but it is not Maxine standing next to him. It is a young man whom he has never seen before. He is tall and lean, a brunette. He is wearing a shirt, trousers, and shoes, but the way they hang on him gives Neil the impression that these articles of clothing are not his usual attire. His hair is wet, as if he's been swimming, but his clothes are relatively dry - just damp around the edges.

His eyes sparkle in a way that has nothing to do with the fire burning cheerfully in the hearth. In fact, they remind Neil of the ocean’s depths and the way the cold moon sometimes glitters on the water at night.

“Who the hell are you?! How the hell did you get in here?”

The boy blinks slowly and gazes at him, studying him. “The door wasn’t locked.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to come charging in here…!”

“I’m sorry,” the stranger says, but he doesn’t sound particularly sorry.

Silence descends. Neil wonders if he’s fallen asleep in front of the fire and is dreaming. If Neil believed in ghosts he’d be half-inclined to believe that this boy was one.

“Well? Who the devil are you?”

The boy ponders the question, bites his lower lip thoughtfully. “I’m Billy’s… friend.”

Neil’s piggy little eyes dart up and down Steve’s body, and he quickly reaches a conclusion that triggers a cruel smirk. Steve can see the shadow of Billy in that twist of the mouth, and it makes his insides do something funny and not entirely pleasant.

"Billy sent you," Neil says.

"Why would Billy send me?"

"I'm not going to be intimidated by his type of low-level thug. He can rot. There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind, you little fairy. I know your type,  _boy_ , and you don't have the stomach for it."

The boy blinks, doesn't seem to understand. He finally shakes his head and answers, slowly and clearly, as if he is talking to someone a little simple. "I'm not a fairy. Billy didn't send me. He doesn't... talk about you. He doesn't like to. I don't think he cares for you. I don't think he would want me here. He doesn't want me and you together."

"Why are you here, then? How did you get here?"

Steve opens his mouth, then closes is again. After a moment he grins a little, half shy, half knowing.

"Let's say the tides brought me."

Neil huffs at that... riddles and nonsense. He won't be distracted from the source of his anger, though.

“Billy... my  _son_.That boy was always wrong. A disappointment. Twisted and weak. What does he do with you…," that ugly smirk is back, "...as ‘friends’?

Steve stares at Neil. He processes what he thinks he's hearing in Neil's tone and what he is not directly asking, and then seems to reach a conclusion of his own.

“He feeds me and makes me wear clothes,” he says. “He reads to me. We go fishing together. He touches my penis with his hands and his mouth until I have pleasure. I touch him too, and he has pleasure. We mate. He calls it fucking. He is repairing a shed with his tools so we can live there. We are going to buy a radio to sing to us and tell us the news when we go for walks and out on the boat.”

Neil twitches violently. He had thought he could shame or embarrass or anger the boy in front of him, but he had been mistaken. He wants to stand up and beat this ridiculous young man saying these obscene things, but he finds he’s too apoplectic to do so.

Or perhaps he is too frightened… frightened by the way this strange being is calmly staring at him as if he’s a small, mildly amusing child.

As if he’s utterly powerless.

Instead of lashing out physically he takes a long, shaky gulp of the water Steve had given him and lets out a low hiss.

“Get out of my house. Abomination!”

Steve blinks at Neil. “I don’t know that word. Abom… abomina... nation?”

Neil slams the cup down on the table and water splashes everywhere. “It means filth! Scum! Sodomite! A twisted freak who goes against God and nature!”

“God. Nature,” Steve repeats, nonplussed. “I know of these things. I don’t go against them. I am them. I exist… so I am God. And Nature.”

“Get out! Get out, you monster!”

“Not yet, Mr. Hargrove. Soon. I will only stay a little while.”

“What do you want?” Neil is afraid, truly afraid now, though he would never admit that out loud. He's horrified that his old intimidation tactics aren't working. A deep animal part of him recognizes a profound danger. The words come out weaker than he wants, more a whimper or a whisper than a demand.

“I want Billy back.” The boy sounds almost like he is thinking out loud, distilling his reality to its essence and translating it using some alien and wholly inadequate language.

Neil swears he can hear the ocean roaring in his ears, even though he hasn’t properly been on the sea in years.

“He has something of mine… and... and he  _is_  something, too… something important. I need him back. Either way, I want him back. He is home, I suppose. Mine. My mate.”

The selkie’s lips quirk upwards and his eyes flash. “My love.”

That word… it’s the end. It pushes Neil over the edge, sends him into a rage. It’s enough to send him lurching out of his chair and towards the boy, who doesn’t step back, doesn’t flinch. He just locks eyes on Neil and Neil finds himself freezing.

Pain rips through his head. He feels like he’s drowning. His vision blurs and a wave of nausea hits him again and again…

“What are you… What…?”

“Billy calls me Steve. I am from an old tribe, from the sea.”

A trickle of blood drips from Steve’s left nostril, but otherwise he remains calm and still, an ancient, immovable, terrible being.

“What…?” Neil falls to his knees and throws up blood and bile and seawater. He knocks over the little table and the cup of water falls to the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. Fluid pours out of his mouth… the water… the blood…

He can’t breathe… oh God, he’s drowning, he feels like he’s drowning, blood is bursting out and flooding his brain, he’s drowning and he’s afraid, he’s on his knees and he’s afraid…

As the aneurysm kills him, the man hears the selkie murmur a final farewell on his way out the door. The little godling of the sea barely spares him another glance as his voice and the darkness of death wash over Neil like a wave.

“This is love, Neil Hargrove.”

“He’s dead, Billy. He’s… the doctor is with him, they think it might have been a stroke or a seizure or something, but…”

Billy doesn’t stay to listen. He turns and starts walking back home, back to his real home, back to the shed he is sure is now empty.

He walks the whole way.

He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t think, he can’t do anything but walk and walk and keep breathing in and out.

When he returns to the cove he can see the light streaming through the shed’s window.

He opens the door and finds a still-damp Steve standing by the stove in just his shirt, scraping burnt soup out of a battered pot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lovelies...what a wild ride! As always, thanks for all kudos and comments.
> 
> Norse to English translation:  
> barn - child  
> sonr - son  
> faðir - father  
> ek elska yðr - I love you


	7. Love

They’ve made it a home, this fishing shed in a little cove, protected from the worst of the wind and the rain by a jutting cliff face, situated far away from the town and the people and the past.

Those things aren’t as frightening as they once were.

Neil Hargrove is dead of natural causes (what else could it be? Hopper asks himself again and again because he doesn’t believe in coincidences, but in the end there is simply no other answer he can live with), and the existence of supernatural beings is just a harmless myth (what else could it be? Nobody asks that, not out loud… but the children of the town know, and they dream), and there is nothing from the outside that can hurt them now.

Dead men can’t press charges. No one cares about two young drifters safely ensconced in a long-forgotten cove.

The past, of course, is an inescapable thing, but that is always the way of it. And Billy and Steve have their whole lives to try to shake it off, if they can.

No. Nothing from the outside can hurt them now.

Billy built an extension for the shed, an extra workroom for storage, a separate place to bathe. Steve scrubbed the wood clean of mildew and arranged the furniture the way he likes. He is almost fussy about keeping everything clean and tidy. Billy bought paint and brushes and Steve painted the place inside and out, deep blues and greens covered in spiral designs of orange and red.

Billy takes Steve with him when he goes fishing, and sometimes Steve sings to the waves. They do finally buy their radio (and they even build a tentative friendship with the jolly, if somewhat befuddled, Bob Newby), but Billy still prefers Steve’s singing above all others.

He buys new books as well, including a book of poems by Walt Whitman (“it’s like your song, Steve... you’ll like it…”) and a children’s primer, and he’s teaching Steve his letters.

Billy rarely goes into town, but when he does he stops by the store where Maxine has gotten a job after school. They don’t have long conversations, but sometimes Billy just likes to know Max is still there. He thinks maybe she feels the same. In time Billy stops seeing the shadow of his father everywhere, and feels something inside him unclench.

He never asks Steve why he was dripping wet that night, the night his father died. He's following Steve's advice and learning to let things go.

Steve makes friends with a boy nearly Max’s age who stumbles upon him one day when he is combing the rocks. Steve tells him the truth about what he is (Steve doesn’t really know how to do anything besides tell the truth, much to Billy’s bemusement), and the boy swears to keep it a secret and to bring chocolate and comic books whenever he comes to visit. Billy panics when he finds out, but Dustin is good for Steve. Even Billy is forced to admit that in time. It is not the worst thing in the world for Steve to have someone else in his life besides Billy. Even selkies need friends.

Steve still gazes out at the sea in the evenings, his face a mask Billy’s can’t quite read… or just doesn’t want to. Billy sometimes goes off on his own like in the old days, angry at the world, letting the tide steer The Hurricane where it will.

They both come back together eventually, make love on the beach, read their books, listen to the radio, drink brandy together quietly in front of the shed or inside by the stove.

One night, curled up in bed together, they fall to talking.

“Come on, pretty, I’m just asking. It’s not like I know, and I want to know. I want to know more about you. All I have to go off is fairy tales.”

Steve blinks at Billy and then scrunches his nose up. “I’m not a fairy.”

“No, I know that… that’s just what they’re called.”

“What?”

“Those kinds of stories. They’re called ‘fairy tales’. The tales about things that don’t exist.”

“I  _do_  exist!”

“ _I_  know that! Most people don’t, though! So, stories about dragons and fairies and selkies and all these creatures that people don’t  _know_  exist are called ‘fairy tales’.

Steve huffs. “Rude.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, how would you feel if I told you that you didn’t exist? Or if I called all the stories selkies tell about humans ‘horse tales’?”

Billy laughs at that, and then laughs harder at the affronted look he gets from Steve. He pulls the selkie closer to him and kisses his nose in apology.

“Look, we’re getting off subject. My point is that I want to know these things. You have a family?”

“Yes. Well… a pod… a community. Parents and siblings and friends. We are prone to wandering far afield on our own most of the time, and there are not so many of us as there once were, but we do like to come together when we can.”

“Do you miss them?”

Steve rolls his eyes as if to say – don’t ask stupid questions. There is a long pause, but it is less awkward than it could be. In the silence there are a thousand questions Billy doesn’t ask, doesn’t want to know the answers to.

_How old are you, really? How long will you live?_

_Would you leave me and go back to your family if you could?_

_Do you love me?_

_How does this end?_

The fire crackles in the grate. Billy catches Steve’s eye and plants a quick, sweet kiss on his lips. After a while he breaks the silence.

“It was my mother. My mother used to tell me the stories. Stories about you. About selkies.”

“Oh?” Steve’s lips twitch up in amusement. “Nice stories, were they? All that wish fulfillment stuff, true love, happy forever and all that?”

“Happily ever after, you mean. Yes. Well, no... not all of them. She said you were dangerous. Could be dangerous.”

Could drag you into the depths and drown you, in more ways than one. Or was that sirens?

 _In more ways than one_.

“But she said that you were usually a blessing. A gift.”

“That could be said about anything and anyone.”

“I suppose.” Billy thinks for a moment, tugs himself closer to Steve and strokes his chest, idly teasing a nipple until it pebbles against his fingers. Steve is so soft and pliant under Billy’s rough fisherman’s hands. Billy sometimes thinks his touch might be coarse and unpleasant for the selkie, but Steve’s shiver and his hooded gaze suggest otherwise.

“You have stories about humans?”

“Of course. Many stories which we share when we come together. Some stories like yours, of selkie princes and princesses coming ashore and marrying humans.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“How do they end?”

_How does this end?_

“In tears, usually.” Steve’s voice is light, amused, and he is aroused by Billy’s ministrations, but there are shadows under his eyes and something glinting in his gaze.

“Going on shore is not recommended. It is widely understood that men are monsters, and as a rule make very poor husbands.”

Billy huffs at that, feels an echo of anger. Maybe because he remembers his father and what a bastard he was. Maybe because he thinks of his past tumbles with the wenches in town, and of the bruises that had decorated Steve’s own body not so very long ago, during those first bad days.

Of the bruises that blossom on Steve’s skin on the nights when Billy is too enthusiastic. Steve usually matches him mark for mark, moans like a wanton whether their love-making is sweet or rough… but still, the purple-yellow wounds bother Billy sometimes.

Billy is not always kind. Like the scared little boy he is, he sometimes hurts the people he cares about the most.

And he is the thing that keeps Steve here.

“It’s the way of the children of men,” Steve says, a sad smile on his lips.

Billy wants to wipe that sadness away, to kiss it away, so he leans forward and captures Steve’s lips with his own.

“It’s always the same,” Steve whispers against his mouth.

“No.” Billy doesn’t want to hear it. He pushes forward again, claiming, demanding. Steve allows it, gives his kiss back to him, kisses the corner of his mouth, his cheek, pushes himself closer and leans in to whisper in his ear.

“You cry for us and we come to the shore.”

Steve smells so good, he feels so good, his warmth, his skin, comfort and affection and pleasure and mystery all wrapped up in one breathtakingly beautiful being.

“You take our skins.”

Billy bites at Steve’s neck, at the sensitive spot under his ear, sucks marks onto his fragile flesh.

“You lock us away.”

Billy pulls Steve close, fingers grasping at cool skin, warming it, making it come alive under his touch. Steve grasps and grinds against his human lover, but when he catches his breath again the words keep tumbling out.

“In time you grow accustomed to having us.”

But Billy has never had anything like this before. He’ll never grow accustomed. He wants to protest but he can’t, he's too busy kissing and biting and sucking and licking.

“You take us for granted. You grow cold and you neglect us.”

Billy takes Steve’s mouth again, pushes his tongue in, stops the words for a moment. His hands knead Steve’s buttocks and his fingers find his perineum, then his hole, rub against it, seeking entrance. Both of their cocks are hard. Billy feels a smear of fluid against his stomach. Steve pulls away.

“When we cry out, you abuse us.”

“Stop,” Billy chokes out. “Please.”

Billy himself can’t stop… he needs to claim, to possess, to keep. He is all those monstrous things Steve fears, but he also loves this man, this creature, this miracle.

He does love him. He does.

He takes them both in hand, and Steve tilts his head back, eyes turning up towards the ceiling in bliss and in thoughtfulness, like he can see far beyond the walls of this small world where just the two of them lay wrapped up in each other.

“…And we can’t go home.”

They both cum a few moments later, their cries shattering the night. When they open their eyes again and look at each other there are tears on both of their faces, their expressions set in a strange mix of ecstasy and agony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be the last chapter but it kind of bummed me out, so there's one more after this... stay tuned!


	8. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starting over

It’s a perfectly ordinary day… the day Billy decides to let Steve go.

 

They are sitting in the shed together… although the shed is not really a shed anymore. They've built on to it over the years, used Billy's prowess and Steve's fishing song to make it comfortable. Now it’s a home, damn near a full-sized house. It has an electric generator, a big bed and a bookshelf full of books, a fridge and a television.

Billy still prefers the radio to the TV, though. Sentimental reasons.

He is listening to it now, the radio, on low volume. He’s listening to news about the war, that big, drawn out war in a far-off country, the war that hasn’t quite touched them yet. Billy can see it coming though. He’s always been good at seeing trouble coming. It looms, a cloud in the middle-distance drawing ever nearer.

Billy is sprawled out in his chair, listening to the news and watching Steve, who is sitting at the table doing the newspaper crossword puzzle. He’s gotten very good at crossword puzzles – despite, or perhaps because of the fact that he is relatively new to the language. The cup of tea in front of him lets off thin pale steam that catches the light.

It’s been fourteen years. Fourteen years to the day.

Two boys on the sun-warmed rocks, one human and one not. Two beings, raw and aching, coming together and finding affection and pleasure and comfort in one another.

They’ve never marked the anniversary, but Billy is always aware of it anyway, in his own head.

He notes it and gives thanks. Notes it and gives Steve an extra kiss.

“Quixotic!” Steve interjects suddenly, scribbling down his answer and looking very pleased with himself.

“Hmm?”

“Quixotic is the answer. Like Don Quixote.”

Billy smiles. “Tilting at windmills?”

Steve nods, also smiling. “Windmills,” he echoes. Steve understands that reference. They've seen windmills, the two of them. They take a bus to the city on special occasions, and they pass one on the road.

“You liked that book. We should reread it soon.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

In the quiet of the shed, warmed by the soft morning light, Billy is filled suddenly with a gently swelling wave of love.

There's nothing special about today. Not really. Just an anniversary... and what's that, really? Just an arbitrary marker of time, of moments past.

An anniversary doesn't hold all the things they've been and said and done together these last few years, all the ways they've changed from two stumbling, unsure children to two wiser, more generous adults. It doesn't really show the way they have grown up together, intertwining like two vines, seeing mirror images of themselves in each other. It doesn't cover all the ways Billy loves Steve - how he loves his smiles and his frowns, the way he drinks tea and the way he listens when Billy reads to him, the way his eyes sparkled the first time Billy took him to the movie theater, the way he consistently burns soup whenever he tries to make it, the way he is still fascinated by the world around him, the way his eyes go warm with lazy, tender contentment when he runs his hands up and down Billy's body. 

It doesn't show Billy and Steve coming to trust each other, and themselves, and this thing between them... doesn't show the slow, inescapable progress of love, that process where they both became new people willing to do what is needed for the other to be whole.

They are two fisherman in a small cove, both with simple needs and simple wants, both filled with affection and desire for each other, still, after all this time.

Both of them, happy, content... and if there is a question...

_...there is a question... an unspoken question..._

...do they really have to answer it? They're content, after all... never answering it...

Aren't they?

_What if...?_

“Steve…” he says, then stops. His eyes are glued to the radio. He’s watching himself speak, hovering above everything, separate. 

“Hmm?” Steve looks up when Billy doesn’t continue immediately, when the silence stretches.

Billy can feel himself drowning in love, in a terrible, beautiful, perfectly ordinary love, a love that was built piece by piece, day by day, between two flawed beings. He sees, suddenly, the tide. That stupid tide that Steve is always going on about. He's sees it moving around him and through them. The force that shapes all things.

He sees it all clearly, fully.

He sees the world he has created with Steve and he wants it to be the truth. It should be the truth - it's that sweet and good and important. But for it to be the truth…

For it to be the truth, Billy has to let Steve go.

Billy has run away from that thought for so long. He has been kind, he has been good, he has tried, and he has kept that thought away for fourteen years. But today he can't. For some terrible reason, today... 

He can feel the selkie’s eyes drilling in to him and it takes all he has in him to drag his head up, to dredge up the words he knows he needs to say.

“Steve…your skin.”

Steve looks at him. He blinks. The space between them widens. The corners of his mouth turn down.

“Billy…”

“It’s not that I want you to go,” Billy interrupts. “Sweetheart. I love you. You can never, ever think it’s because I want you to go.”

“What else am I to think?” Steve's voice cracks slightly, and Billy feels like he's being gutted.

“Believe that I want you to choose. That I want you to be as happy and free as you’ve made me. That I want you to be whole, and you can't be whole if I've taken away your freedom. I love you, and I want you to be whole.”

“I’ll have to go. If you do this, I’ll have to go. That's how it works.”

It’s the truth. The truth Billy has never asked for and has always secretly known. It hurts to hear it, but it doesn’t change anything.

“I love you,” Billy says. “I love you. You’re the only thing that really matters to me. I told you once that I would never leave you, and I never will. Where you go, I go. But…” Billy can feel the wetness on his cheeks and the deep, soft pain in his chest, but he can’t stop.

“But I think… we both need to go forward. But it may have to be that we go forward in different directions. I want that for you, and for me. I don’t want us to…”

He can’t continue.

Such an ordinary day. Just a stupid, ordinary day.

The day it ends.

Steve pulls him out of his chair and kisses him. He kisses him like he's starving and Billy is food, like he's drowning and Billy is oxygen. Billy kisses back and tries to commit every aspect of Steve to memory, his taste, his smell, his touch, this undefinable feeling. They pour all their passion into each other, into this moment... 

They make love one last time.

When they are done Billy leaves Steve stretched out on the floor (sweating and sated, gazing up at the ceiling with a terrible sort of restlessness) and goes to his secret place, a place he has not visited in fourteen years but the location of which he has never forgotten. The seal skin is as smooth and beautiful as it was when he buried it, humming and thrumming with an otherworldly power.

He takes it back to the cove and places in on the sand by the water. He walks into the shed as Steve is walking out. Their hands grasp each other, their foreheads meet, and their lips, but they don’t stop moving forward in opposite directions. If either one stops moving, they’ll both die.

Steve takes his skin and disappears into the water.

The next day Billy receives a notice in the mail informing him that he has been drafted.

 

 

Billy comes back from Vietnam two years later. He arrives in the States in pieces, both inside and out.

Shrapnel has torn out part of his back and mangled his leg. He’s in pain all the time, he needs crutches to walk, he self-medicates with booze and weed and prescription painkillers.

All that would be a cake-walk if it wasn’t for the horrors in his mind.

At night he dreams of a distant land soaked in blood and napalm. The visions don’t end when he wakes. He spends his first days back sick and lightheaded in the VA hospital, feeling for all the world like he's drowning, like he can’t catch his breath... feeling like a hunted, haunted thing. The shadows under his eyes grow deeper.

In time he recovers enough that the doctors are satisfied (or at least willing to risk it), and is released from the hospital. He makes his way back to Hawkins.

Billy returns to the cove and the shed. It’s empty now. Steve is gone. He’d forgotten that Steve had gone… he had been such a huge part of Billy’s dreams in ‘Nam, had been the one thing he’d held on to as he'd slogged through the blood and the mud, through the laughter and the tears and the wild, technicolor chaos of war.

He goes into the shed... and Steve’s not there.

Except that he is.

He’s there in the faded orange swirls of paint that decorate their home. He’s there in the chipped tea cup he had claimed as his favorite. He’s there in the worn copies of  _Don Quixote_  and  _Leaves of Grass_. He’s there in the rust-rope-grease smell of The Hurricane, worn and disused from its long sojourn wintering in the cove but still as seaworthy as it ever was.

Steve is in the glittering water as it catches the sun. He’s in the cold-salt smell of the sea. He’s in the feel of soft sand and warm wood.

And he’s in the people who come to visit Billy.

Maxine is the first.

She brings him food, gets the electricity back on, sorts his medication into little containers so that he knows what to take and when. He grumbles, but not very loudly or emphatically, and she plows ahead with her busybody ways regardless.

She says he's her brother, and it's her job to look after him. She says she wants to. Neil is gone, Susan is gone, and the ties that bind the two step-siblings together have been purified somehow, are now free from old fears and regrets. Billy smiles when he sees her marching down the beach towards him, her red hair streaming behind her and catching the sun, her mouth set in a determined line.

She brings her husband, Lucas Sinclair, and their little one, Ben. She’d only had the kid a few months before Billy had gone away… Ben is small and loud but Billy finds he doesn’t mind. He sits his nephew on his good knee and watches his sweet, wide-eyed curiosity. He makes a point of finding him new (and preferably shiny) things to see and touch and explore.

He starts talking to Lucas, who was also in the war, a scout in the light infantry. At first the conversations between them are stilted, awkward, but in time the two men grow more comfortable with each other, begin sharing those secret things that only soldiers who have been in combat truly appreciate. They can mock and laugh and cuss each other out without fear of being misunderstood, can rake each other across the coals in a way they can't with civilians, can make those harsh observations that are superficially brutal yet still sensitive to of all their shared vulnerabilities. Gallows humor soothes their dark dreams. Storytelling sessions contextualize the monsters in Billy's head until in time they start to blur and fade. 

Lucas brings his friend, Mike, who is getting his doctorate in some science thing and working at Dover army base.

One day, Lucas brings Will Byers with him.

When Will sees Billy, he freezes. Billy is confused… he remembers the kid, sure, from around town... his mom married Newby at some point, Billy remembers that... but he is befuddled by Will’s reaction and then stunned when he grabs Billy by the shoulders and starts to cry.

A year ago, a green young war correspondent had been attached to Billy’s unit. Billy had paid him no mind… it was hard enough keeping himself alive without concerning himself with the needs of Time and Newsweek and The Washington Post.

One day, Billy pushes the young reporter out of the line of fire and gets a body full of shrapnel for his trouble.

Billy doesn’t remember much about that day. It had been an ordinary sort of day... as ordinary as they get. Sweating in the muggy heat, playing poker, going on patrol. An ordinary day, and then the explosion. Billy sees it coming half a second before it hits. He doesn't think... he just acts. He acts and then for a terrible stretch of time (a moment, an eternity) there is nothing but the blood and the pain.

He remembers Steve’s song ringing in his ears and keeping him sane, keeping him present, keeping him alive even when death was looming over him like a cloud.

Will Byers has never forgotten the man who saved him.

Billy Hargrove. A real hero.

 

 

Dustin Henderson comes to visit.

Dustin had not gone to war. He had been exempted on medical grounds and had stayed in Hawkins, organizing peace protests and getting his education. He became a science teacher at the local school, and he always brings Billy books and magazines to read. Dustin is not a soldier or a sailor, and while he loves Billy because Max and Lucas and Ben and Will love Billy, that’s not why he visits.

Dustin and Billy share a different kind of unspoken bond – they both miss Steve.

“I see him sometimes, you know.”

They are sitting out on the beach in the little cove, drinking beers and watching the waves. The day is calm and sunny.

Billy’s heart is in his throat. He doesn’t need to ask who Dustin is talking about. It's a huge relief - something in him was sure he had dreamed it all up, had dreamed up Steve. But another part of him knows that he could never have come up with something that marvelous on his own.

“Where?”

“In the water… on the rocks. He’s… it’s a seal. It sounds crazy, I know… I think I’m crazy sometimes. There’s just this seal and it comes up onto the rocks and I swear to God it has his eyes and… it scrunches up it's face in that way, you remember? The way he used to scrunch up his face when he was confused or annoyed?”

“I remember.”

“I talk to it… to him. I just sit and talk. He swims in the shallows or suns himself on a rock and I just sit and talk to him. I don’t know if he understands or not. Sometimes I don’t see him for weeks. I don't know where he goes but just when I start to think it really is all in my head... there he is, back again. I… I told him that you were gone. Gone to ‘Nam, I mean. And I told him about your… about what happened. I told him when you came back.”

“He doesn’t want to see me, Dustin," Billy says, and the ugly, embittered part of him believes that. "Why would he want to see me?”

Dustin shakes his head and gives Billy a toothy grin. They've become friends in the year since Billy came home. Billy has friends now… real friends… people who love him, in spite of it all.

In spite of it all, it’s been an interesting year for Billy. A pretty good year.

Billy can’t help but smile a little in response.

“Fucking... what is it, Henderson?”

“Nothing,” Dustin sighs. “Just… sometimes your total obliviousness just blows my mind.”

 

 

Billy decides he’s going to go night fishing.

It’s the height of stupidity. He’s a little drunk, a little stoned, he’s limping and he’s in the strangest kind of mood. He is in no way up for taking out the stupid boat on a stupid fishing expedition in the middle of the stupid night.

But he hears this song in his head. This strange, familiar song... and he can't seem to shake it. He's restless like he used to be in his younger days, and he hasn't felt that way in some time. He puts on his old boots and his worn work jacket, and ties his hair (which had been cut short in the army but which he has let grow long again) back with a scrap of leather. He takes a book, like he’s really going to read on the boat at night, and the transistor radio. They are totems, magic ingredients. It takes him a long time to get the boat out onto the water with his leg and his back, but with some grunting and groaning he finally manages it.

He reworks the old spell, the one he performed in his youth.

He lets the tide carry him.

He sits on the deck and looks up at the moon, his fingers scratching idly at the boat's chipped paint and trailing lightly along the water's surface. He thinks about his choices and his life.

He’s floating, drifting.

He’s okay.

He’s glad.

He's glad he found his selkie on the rocks that day. He's glad they had fourteen years together. He's had some time to think about how it was back then, about how  _he_  was back then, and while he's sorry for many of the things he's done and for all the ways he hurt Steve and himself, he's glad he got the chance to know Steve. To know love.

He’s glad he went away – glad he met the people he met, the people in the army and afterwards, is glad he traveled and spent time in a new place, a place terrible and beautiful in turns. He’s glad he helped someone, glad he helped Will Byers. Will Byers will do remarkable things someday. Billy can see the future in Will and he’s glad he pushed him out of harms way.

He’s glad he made it home alive. He’s glad he patched things up with Maxine and became friends with Lucas. He’s so very, very glad he got to meet Ben. 

He’s glad he let Steve go, that he let their love transform into something whole and true. He did the right thing. 

He’s glad he turned into the man he turned into. Not the best Billy, or a perfect Billy… but a good Billy nonetheless. A Billy who lived his life. Who didn’t drown in his dreams. Who changed, who grew, who left, who came back.

The moon is full and bright…

Billy isn’t afraid when two long, pale arms come over the edge of the boat and pull that familiar, beautiful body up and out of the dark water. He isn’t surprised by the long brown hair, by the splash of moles against pale skin, by the sparkling eyes and small smile illuminated by Billy’s lamp and the moonlight.

The figure moves across the deck towards him. He is as breathtaking as he was the day Billy first saw him.

“I’ve noticed a pattern with you, love,” Billy says. “You leave, but you come back.”

The selkie huffs out a laugh. “Yes. You are a nightmare, you frustrating man. I can’t stay away.”

Steve kneels in front of Billy and touches him, damp hands exploring the new Billy, the wounded soldier, the lost lover.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were part siren,” Steve mutters with a mixture of annoyance and fondness, chewing on his lower lip to keep himself from smiling. “You have your own song and you sing it without realizing. Lovely and fierce.”

Steve’s clever fingers push up Billy's shirt and stutter to a stop when they touch mangled skin. His smile drops and his face becomes a mask of pain. “What did they do to you, beloved?”

“I’m alright,” Billy rubs his hands up and down Steve's sides, comforting and consoling him. “It’s not bad.”

“You’re in pain. You’re suffering.”

“Part of the human condition,” Billy smirks. “You were right. Sometimes being fast is better than planting your feet.”

“Don’t make me bite you,” Steve says, mildly. "I leave you alone for five minutes and this happens."

 “It was worth it,” Billy says, the under-developed thought he had been turning over in his mind finally taking form. “I… I’ve done things I needed to do. I was part of something... a few somethings, and even one or two good things. I lived. It was all worth it.”

“Yes,” Steve smiles and plants a kiss on the corner of Billy’s mouth. 

“And you?” Billy asks, though the possible answers scare him. “Have you…?”

“Oh yes,” Steve says. “I’ve lived. Never quite as much as I live when I’m with you... you do make things interesting... brighter, more colorful, more special. I see things differently now... and I am different. But yes, it has been a necessary time.”

There is a long silence as Billy and Steve touch each other, re-familiarize themselves with the taste and smell and feel of each other... with this undefinable feeling that finally soothes the ever-present ache they have both been carrying inside themselves for so long. 

It is only when Billy kisses Steve’s cheek and tastes a wetness that is not sea water that he realizes…

“You’re crying. Steve, sweetheart? Why are you crying?”

“I missed you,” Steve says, his voice cracking.

“I missed you, too. I love you,” Billy says. 

“I love you, too.” Steve's answering smile is small but real, true, and reaches all the way up to his soft eyes.

“You’re still the one… the only one. It was all worth it, it was all important, but you... you're the most important thing. The best part of me.” 

“Yes,” Steve whispers, nodding, his fingers stroking Billy’s face. His voice is filled with all the bittersweet emotions that mean  _reunion_ , the gentle violence of old hurts being healed, forgiven.

"My love. My mate. My treasured one. The tide's best gift. My Billy."

The waves lap at the sides of the boat, gently rocking them both in a sweet lullaby. It feels like the dreams of childhood, but also like timelessness, like infinity. A tiny, fragile ship on a vast ocean, small yet safe, beloved, cradled by the tide. After all his searching, all his wandering, Billy knows that this is home, that he is finally home.

“Billy…” Steve’s voice is the steady murmur of the sea. “Billy, beloved, come with me…”

It takes Billy a moment to understand what he is asking.

“Steve, I can't. I'll... I’ll drown.”

“No…” Steve says, smiling, his gaze warm and excited. “No, my love. Come with me. Trust me.”

Billy knows that look, that tone of voice. It's the look Steve gets when he finds the right answer for a difficult crossword question. Billy can’t look away… he’ll drown, drown happily in those eyes.

“I’ve so much to show you, Billy. So much. Billy, I… I’ve met your mother. I think…" Steve's smile spreads across his face. "I think you can come with me. I think we can live.”

Steve kisses Billy, a long, deep kiss, a kiss made all the sweeter by their long separation, by all the ways they have changed and yet stayed the same. It's a kiss that promises the future.

“Trust the tides,” he whispers, and Billy knows what his answer will be.

Arms wrapped around each other, their intertwined bodies cocooned in a silvery skin big enough for two, Billy and Steve slip off the boat and into the dark sea.

The Hurricane is found empty and adrift the next day, and no one except Dustin Henderson, a local character known for having lively conversations with the seals that swim in long-forgotten coves, has the faintest idea what to make of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End! Thank you, lovely stardust readers!


	9. Take the Long Way Home: Mood board

Hello everyone! I got super bored and made a mood board for this story instead of doing actual work! Hooray! Since I don't have a Tumblr account / haven't figured out how to embed images on this site, I thought I'd post the link for it here. 

All the love <3

[Take the Long Way Home mood board](http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/8-juRtRu/share)


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